Like accidentally standing barefoot on a plastic brick, 2014’s The Lego Movie sent a jolt up the nervous system of family-friendly animated movies. Early dismissals as a corporate cash-in were quickly quashed when directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller channelled their earlier hits, bringing the energy of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs and irony of 21 Jump Street to create something truly fresh: a fun fantasy romp, and a metatextual parenting parable, in a single well-constructed package. Everything was indeed awesome, especially for the Warner Bros. coffers. The lure of a franchise, inevitably, proved strong.
Hugely entertaining — though it could do with being less of a chip off the old block.
The Lego Batman Movie was next in this burgeoning brick-ematic universe, and now hard on its plastic heels some seven months later comes this, the first in the series not to use characters from the original film. Instead the source comes from the ‘Ninjago’ line of products sold by the Danish brick brand, a vaguely Japanese martial-arts-meets-mechanised-droids theme which has already inspired a TV cartoon. Since most mainstream audiences will be unfamiliar with the range, we’re introduced to the new world via a whimsical Princess Bride-esque old storyteller played by Jackie Chan, who neatly bookends the film in live action. And, echoing the conceit of the first film, other live-action elements are ingeniously incorporated into the animation.
Using Lego minifigures as props, Chan tells the story of Ninjago, a mysterious place far away, existing (like Big Hero 6’s San Fransokyo) in a mid-Pacific approximation of East and West. The residents of Ninjago live under constant threat from the tyranny of Lord Garmadon (Justin Theroux), who dreams of ruling the town for reasons that may exist but are never quite divulged. Enter the heroic Secret Ninja Force: six teenage heroes each with their own colour, fighting specialism, elemental force and witty identity. Think Power Rangers, only with fewer opposable thumbs.
Like its Lego predecessors, the opening act of The Lego Ninjago Movie is fun with a capital F: frantic, fizzing with energy, and furiously funny. It’s beautifully animated, too — if, like previous entries, a little over-caffeinated during the action sequences, bricks flying every which way at such a speed that it might induce motion sickness.
After the ‘Ultimate Weapon’ is used to summon a catastrophic (emphasis on the ‘cat’) enemy, our heroes embark on a mystical journey into the wilderness to track down the ‘Ultimate Ultimate Weapon’. The gag rate largely remains, but déjà vu sets in fast. Despite heroic voice work by Justin Theroux, Lord Garmadon is wildly similar to Will Ferrell’s Lord Business from the first film, and the entire story steps down a well-trodden path. Garmadon’s son is the Green Ninja (Dave Franco) in a none-too-subtle echo of the Skywalker family tree, while the daddy issues that dominate the latter half of the film will feel tired, even to younger viewers.
That signature tone — arch, knowing, sheened in puckish irony — sometimes struggles to connect, too. One character mocks the “needlessly cryptic metaphors” of enigmatic sensei Master Wu (voiced by Chan), but it’s not quite courageous enough to entirely subvert the tropes it pokes fun at, seemingly happy to follow a generic template in which characters learn obvious lessons about how the real power was inside them all along (a lesson Dorothy and the Tin Man learnt some eight decades earlier).
Still, it’s bright and breezy enough to keep most ages diverted for an hour-and-a-half, and those diminutive minifigures still manage to stand above most of their animated competition (though Pixar, on its good days, might have something to say about that). It’s just a shame that a series which promised so much is already showing signs of fatigue and repetition. The Lego Movie felt essential. The Lego Ninjago Movie, meanwhile, feels disposable.
