The Lego Movie 2 offers a Second Part with more songs, lots of laughs, and a little less resonance
How long can you keep playing with little plastic building blocks? That’s a question The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part raises twice, both as part of its narrative and by its very existence. Like the questions asked by so many sequels, it’s something that the first movie more or less already answered, with its grown father character (played in a surprise live-action cameo by Will Ferrell) showing that Lego fandom can continue well into adulthood—and that it’s never too late to re-learn how to play, rather than simply collect.
Lego Movie 2 presses ahead anyway, rephrasing the question without deepening it—and without the same craftiness about concealing its parallel, unseen live-action story. Like Brad Bird’s recent Incredibles 2, it follows up a dazzling animated original (all the more dazzling for earning that designation despite being based on a toy line) with some big ideas that don’t cohere with the same streamlined magic as its predecessor.
Also like Incredibles 2, the movie nonetheless shows off a great deal of craft. (More so than the fun Lego Batman movie and the more rote Ninjago spin-off.) While Bird specializes in the creation of action set pieces, Lego’s Phil Lord and Chris Miller deal in jokes issued with a toddler’s frantic enthusiasm but a comic’s goofball commitment. Lord and Miller are only writing this time out, having left the director’s chair to Mike Mitchell, but they still careen around this toy world in deceptive control of their abilities. They jump into their sequel straight from the last scene of its predecessor, when the recently saved Bricksburg is confronted by an invasion of toddler-monster Duplo blocks—and then just as swiftly leap five years ahead to the decimated post-apocalyptic landscape the invaders hath wrought. They spoof Mad Max and send the Justice League to their doom with the perfect economy of great throwaway jokes.