If we’re just brutally honest, The Lego Movie doesn’t work anywhere near as well on DVD as it did on the big screen. Unless you’ve got a giant flat screen with the latest 3D TV capabilities built into it, the down-scaled replay struggles to live up to the impressive visual style of the movie. Without the larger than life size of the vast Lego construction on a cinema screen, the notion of the little blocks that have gone into it all are sort of lost a little.
That aside, the storyline is pretty mental, bringing a surreal comic tale to the multicoloured bricks that takes the funnier elements of computer games like Lego City Undercover and the Lego Star Wars series to a whole new, Salvador Dali style of abstraction. We’re not big fans of the late-in-the-day inclusion of the real world to that of the Lego city and wider universe, so that sort of took a lot of the sheen off the film a bit for us, but if you put that aside it’s a fun filled storyline.
The main plot centres around a construction worker called Emmet, who struggles to fit in, despite his best efforts to conform to the instruction manual lifestyle of overbearing dictator, Lord Business. However, he’s quickly swept up in a hilarious and crazy plot that sees the nobody being forced to break away from his narrow lifestyle and develop new skills as the Lego saviour, The Special.
With wizened old wizards spinning out prophecies, tongue-in-cheek Lego versions of super heroes like Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman, a mental pirate, split personality cop, a unicorn/kitten hybrid from Cloud Cuckoo Land and Benny the 1980 space guy the film is filled with some very cool characters. Added to that is the epic concept of the Master Builder, who can whip up anything they want out the little bricks around them without the need for a manual, and you’ve got a lot to hold your attention in the action packed movie.
The cast has been carefully crafted to deliver a lot of laughs and no matter what size of screen you watch the DVD on, it’s one of the best factors in the release. Chris Pratt (Guardians Of The Galaxy) brings a lot of great comic timing to his performance as Emmet and with the likes of Will Ferrell (Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues) as Lord Business, Will Arnett as Batman and Nick Offerman as Metal Beard, there’s a lot of comedy might wrapped up in the film.
The animation and visuals are very impressive, blending a beautiful stop-motion style with CGI bolt ons to create such a stunning looking film. As we’ve mentioned, this is much less impressive on the average sized TV, but that doesn’t take anything away from the massive achievement of the painstaking animation that has gone into making the film such a cinematic hit.
Extras on the The Lego Movie DVD aren’t much to add to the equation, sadly, but they include an “Everything Is Awesome” sing-along feature and fan made films, bringing some home grown Lego stop-motion to the party.
While we love the movie, we can’t get away from the fact that it just doesn’t translate as well visually to the small screen for DVD. Go as large as you can and you probably won’t be too fazed by it, but as a result we need to add a bit of a cautionary tale on our review, which brings it down a notch or two, but for anyone with a 50″ screen you can probably add at least 0.5 to our review score. Although, for you lucky few, you’d probably be better off opting for Blu-ray and 3D visuals to really get the most out of the home entertainment release.
The other aspect of The Lego Movie that just doesn’t sit right for us is the random inclusion of a stint in the real world, which makes the film a little too long and slows it down, just as it’s approaching fever pitch. While this is massively tempered by the sheer comic power of the dialogue between the characters, it definitely keeps our review down by a few points.
The Lego Movie DVD review: 3.5/5
