The Lego franchise has exploded in recent
years much like an angry kid putting his foot through the Ghostbusters Fire Station
after finding that a single brick is missing. The evidence is everywhere, from
countless video games including the hugely-popular Lego Dimensions to the very reason behind this review.
Following on
from 2014’s The Lego Movie and this year’s The Lego Batman Movie, the latest piece
in the quickly-assembling cinematic franchise
sees young Lloyd (Dave Franco) and his friends, a secret ninja fighting force, who, along with the help of wiseman Master Wu (Jackie Chan), battle Justin Theroux’s
evil Garmadon who’s hellbent on destroying Ninjago City. But when they’re sent
on a quest to find a sacred power that will help defeat him, father-son
melodrama ensues between our star hero and the formidable villain.
To say the Lego movies’ action sequences are as visually-indecipherable
as those of the Trans-Formers movies
is an understatement – you literally can’t tell the brick from the bricks. Relying
on CGI for 80% of their films seems like a missed opportunity given the charm
of the likes of Aardman’s Wallace &
Gromit, and even some of the internet’s far more impressive Lego stop-motion renditions of classic
movie scenes and trailers, but the effects here are only a part - or piece - of the problem.
There's something to enjoy here. If anything, the films are a celebration of the joy both kids and adults
alike have when building make belief Lego-landscapes. There are no rules and the sky’s the limit. But a movie about Lego should have more basis in
a joke about how Hollywood has finally run out of ideas than it should in
reality. Like the previous two entries, Ninjago is no exception - it's nothing more than a
ninety-minute commercial, as the vast majority of this franchise’s revenue is
no doubt made through its merchandise (Lego
based on a movie based on Lego – how
more corporate can it get?).
For my full audio review which was aired on Swindon 105.5, click here.
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