“The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part” is a film that exists. I am not certain why it exists, but it very much does. It is a perfectly fun film, though it is far from matching the first in quality.
To begin, the good. The animation style from the first film carries over to this one, with some minor improvements in quality, with realistic looking fingerprints dotting many of the characters’ hyper-realistic plastic Lego bodies. The film adds to the original’s animation with some brief scenes of stop motion.
The humor is fun like the first film, though a bit relentless at times thanks to the writing of Phil Lord, who wrote last year’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse” (a film every person should see), and Chris Miller. These two did not direct this film as they did the first, instead turning to Mike Mitchell, who directed the most recent “Kung Fu Panda” film.
Mitchell leaves his mark on the film with some surprisingly strong action sequences, though they were far too sparse to be truly fulfilling. The message of the film was one of moderation and finding compromise, was fantastic and a message I think more movies and art needs to spread in these divisive times.
In the way of acting, most everyone is fine. Chris Pratt is fine as Emmett, Elizabeth Banks is fine as Lucy, Tiffany Haddish is fine as the main antagonist to Pratt and Alison Brie is fine as, I hate to actually have to write the name, Unikitty. However, Will Arnett’s Batman is the best thing about this film as he was in the first film, but wasn’t in the “Lego Batman Movie.” Unfortunately, there is far too little of him in the film.
Now, the bad. The film’s message, though very good, is delivered in a very holier-than-thou, preachy way, taking the deliberately annoying song from the first film “Everything is Awesome” and turning it into “Everything’s not Awesome” to highlight the importance of realism in getting through life. There is a twist, which was pretty dumb. Some characters do things completely out of line with their personalities for plot purposes. The worst part of the film is the opening, which is forced, abrupt and weird, and directly contradicts the rest of what happens in the movie.
Overall, “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part” is nowhere near as good as the first film, though it has some stronger elements and a great message. I give “The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part” three “Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga” blue studs out of four.