Flash Movie Review: The LEGO NINJAGO Movie
THE PROBLEM WAS they looked alike even though they were different sexes. His mother had a reputation in the neighborhood of not being smart; though the adjectives used to describe her were unkind. People just assumed her son had the same low level of intelligence. Sadly it was a perception, it was not a fact. However this falsehood stayed with him all through school. If he had been a straight A student then the assumption would have quickly died, but he was more of an average grade pupil with grades that went from C to A. The interesting thing about this was he did not care or at least did not show any concern regarding what people thought of him. It turns out he was smart and used this incorrect assumption to his advantage. To make a long story short he became a shrewd business owner who became quite successful. ASSUMPTION BY ASSOCIATION is something people tend to do easily and in my opinion too often. To me I consider it along the same lines as profiling. I have mentioned before my feelings about individuals making rash judgments based on a person’s appearance. After recently being updated on the changes taking place within the labor laws, I know they say one cannot discriminate; however I have seen and been on the receiving end with the misconception that overweight individuals are lazy. Sadly I have heard people’s comments in a variety of settings that were derogatory based on a person’s race, gender, sexuality, religion, etc. I know it is more prevalent than my experiences and I find it pathetic. The idea of someone making a judgment solely based on one’s looks is frankly horrifying. From my school years I have seen how these types of perceptions can scar a child for a long time, possibly their entire life. Imagine what the boy in this animated action adventure had to endure. ALL THE KIDS avoided Lloyd, voiced by Dave Franco (Now You See Me franchise, Neighbors franchise), because of his father Garmadon, voiced by Justin Theroux (The Girl on the Train, The Leftovers-TV). His father just wanted to rule the world. This 3rd film in the LEGO movie franchise started out in a fun way by having the first several minutes being live action with Jackie Chan (Shanghai Noon, Rush Hour franchise) as Mr. Liu and later voicing Master Wu. I liked Jackie in both roles. Including Fred Armisen (Easy A, Saturday Night Live-TV) voicing Cole, Michael Pena (The Martian, End of Watch) voicing Kai and Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick, Fist Fight) voicing Jay; the actors were fine with their characters. The script had several amusing scenes; however, there was little of the laugh out loud or surprise factor compared to the previous pictures. As for the animation it was just as good as before and I especially enjoyed the interjection of the live action character. In fact that was my favorite part. Overall I have to tell you my enthusiasm watching this film was lackluster; there was a sense of tiredness since it pretty much was the same stuff being done as before. I do not know if there is an actual cartoon character for Master Wu; the closest example I could think of was a takeoff on The Karate Kid or an old television show I think called Kung Fu. After playing with the same toy for an extended time one eventually will get tired of it; that is what I believe is going on here. There was one extra scene of outtakes in the middle of the credits.
2 ¼ stars
Posted on September 26, 2017, in Fantasy/Sci-Fi and tagged 2 1/4 stars, action, adventure, animation, dave franco, fred armisen, jackie chan, justin theroux, kumail nanjiani, lego, martial arts, michael pena. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
My husband took our younger kids to see this past weekend. They also came away thinking it was mediocre. They all loved The Lego Movie and the Lego Batman Movie but my husband said this movie had none of their wit or their smarts, that there wasn’t a big theme to make the plot more purposeful or elevate it for the adults in the audience. My kids enjoyed it but my 10 year old said it was disappointing that it wasn’t all rendered as if made of Lego and my 8 year old said it was good but really for little kids, meaning younger than him.
A very good take on the film because I noticed the only laughter was from little kids. Thank you for the comments.
I don’t know what it is but I have been feeling that way about a good many movies of late as well. I wonder why that is? Are we overstimulated or are we finally accepting certain styles of either animation or SFX so that now they seem tedious? In a way that could be a good thing, because it will have to challenge writers and film makers in general to work a little harder to excite us or hold our interest. That could be a good thing.
I so hope your take on this dilemma proves out true. We could use some well written scripts. Thank you for the comments.
This one is si funny 🙂
I create my own animated cartoons too for kids 🙂
Hi and thank you for stopping by to leave your comments. How fun for you creating animated cartoons. I hope I get to see one of them on the big screen some day.