When The Lego Movie was released in 2014, it was a financial and critical hit. The filmmakers took what could have been a shameless cashgrab and told a story that was groundbreaking and life affirming. Surprising as it was, people have been telling stories with Lego in stop motion for decades prior. The bricks lend themselves quite naturally for a creative outlet where mistakes can be made and turned into beautiful works of art. So when you hear that super producer Pharrell Williams (the guy with the big hat who sang “Happy”) is making a documentary about his life with Lego pieces, the two really click.
“Seriously?”, director Morgan Neville asks Williams after he tells him his idea for telling his story through Lego. It’s a fair question. Neville is a fairly accomplished documentary filmmaker who has made several films about incredibly famous people (Keith Richards, Brian Wilson, Mister Rogers), but all of them have been quite conventional documentaries. So why Lego? One might think cynically that this is all a brand deal and a quick paycheck, but thinking back to what made The Lego Movie so compelling, Pharrell’s career and the brick toys fit together quite nicely. The gimmick is justified quite early into the film when Pharrell as a child stares into a speaker listening to “I Wish” by Stevie Wonder. He sees colors and shapes coming out of the record that are represented physically by Lego pieces. It turns into a psychedelic experience that immediately validates the format. Sure, something more conventional like a fresh cg style could have worked for the animated portions, but having it be Lego brings its own weight into the film. It’s something most everyone in the world has played with at some point. It’s familiar. And as the film progresses, you start to realize how impactful Pharrell’s music has been to most everyone in the world.
Dedicated fans of Pharrell’s music will be elated. This film is wall to wall bangers from his Neptunes era to his current day movie scores. It’s quite a marvel to see how big of an impact he has had on all of popular music in the last 25 years. One of the stand out montages is him and Chad Hugo (of the Neptunes and N.E.R.D.) sitting behind a production booth as different artists slide past us like a carousel of hits. We go from “Senorita” by Justin Timberlake to “Hot in Herre” by Nelly to “Milkshake” by Kelis to “I’m a Slave 4 U” by Britney Spears. In most careers, that list of songs would be a victory lap, but for Pharrell, it’s the warm up. Some of the most exciting sequences are the stories of how some of his mega hits got made. “Grindin’” by The Clipse is a particulary sweet hometown moment, but the stand out is the story behind “Drop It Like It’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg. The way they censor Snoop’s famous consumption of a certain plant for a PG rated Lego film is hilarious.
Every frame of this film is Lego-fied, even the more traditional documentary aspects of the film. Director Morgan Neville shot all of the interviews, gathered archival footage, and assembled a cut of the film using storyboard animatics. Animation director Howard Baker was in charge of mapping on the Lego characters into home video footage of younger Pharrell, his Source Award acceptance speech, and all of the interviews with famous musical artists. Each time you see an artist depicted in Lego form, it adds a layer of whimsy to the film that feels very delightful at times (you see Gwen Stefani actually leave the interview to tell her landscapers to stop working). There’s also moments where a serious topic is addressed and seeing Lego figures isn’t the appropriate tone. Toward the end of the film, we see the 2015 Black Lives Matter protests depticed by minifigs. It’s clearly something really important to Williams that he wanted to include in this story, but the sentiment falls a little flat when we cut to a plastic Lego character in a “I Can’t Breathe” shirt.
Documentaries that are produced by the subject often have a problem where they aren’t all too interested in digging deeper than the surface. There’s moments in this film where Pharrell gets tempted by these grey executive types that are trying to exploit him. This is what the film considers his down period. Everyone around him sees the harm it’s doing to him, but he thinks shifting into a mainstream radio pop arena is what he’s supposed to do. Though the film portrays this moment in his life as the worst time in his career, the filmmakers are pointedly obtuse about what was the product of this period. Pusha T, a rapper who has worked with Pharrell since they were children in Virginia Beach, reveals the closest thing to a criticism of something Pharrell made: the song “All Eyes on Me” by The Clipse featuring Keri Hilson. Pusha doesn’t even say he didn’t like Pharrell’s production on the song. He just thinks it’s personally his worst song (As a Pusha T fan, I actually like it). There is absolutely no mention of his most public controversy: being sued by the estate of Marvin Gaye for copyright infringement on “Blurred Lines”. This feels like an actual dark point in your life that you would want to address in a film about your career.
What is most bizarre about this “dark period of making music for executives” is the discrepancy between that corporate work and the corporate work he does for the Despicable Me movies. Yes, he does actually seem to be proud of his scores for those films, but in real life, the only difference between the evil grey exectutives and the Minions is that they’re yellow. Luckily, the film doesnt flounder too long in the dark. They exit this sequence with a wall shaking, transcendental montage set to N.E.R.D.’s “Sooner or Later”, the best scene in the film.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Pharrell fans will be pleased and Pharrell agnostics will be converted. Seeing different cameos from 2000’s rappers was a joy. Though the narrative feels a little washed of controversy, the Lego reenactments of his life add tons of color and fun into an already engaging story.
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