Thanks to years of seeing DIY stop-motion shorts made from LEGOs all over the internet, it's been hard for me to imagine LEGOs being the center of a big Hollywood film. But Warner Bros. has won me over with their latest trailer for The LEGO Movie. Not only does the trailer show a lot of imagination, it's also got a pretty on point sense of humor.
Directed by Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs helmers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, The LEGO Movie centers on an ordinary everyman minifigure named Emmet (Parks And Recreation's Chris Pratt). As you can see above, Emmet is a simple guy who takes pleasures in the way everything in his life--from overpriced coffee to the daily grind of traffic--just clicks into place. But when a work place accident thrusts him into a wild underbelly of the city he thought he knew so well, he discovers his destiny might be that of The Special, a savior MasterBuilder.
With the help a wide cast of colorful characters that include a robot-beating Batman (Will Arnett), Superman (Channing Tatum), Wonder Woman (Cobie Smolders), a wise wizard (Morgan Freeman), a sneering bad cop (Liam Neeson), and a sassy badass called WyldStyle (Elizabeth Banks), Emmet will have to bring down the maniacal plan of the nefarious President Business (Will Ferrell), who loves tacos almost as much as he does being an evil tyrant.
It's easy to be cynical about a movie that's motivation is undoubtedly to sell toys to children worldwide. But the end game of every Hollywood movie is to make money, right? Still, as just about every Pixar movie and quite a few DreamWorks adventures have proved, you can make a movie to sell cuddly monsters, charismatic cars or gruffly lovable ogres to kids and still make the stories wildly entertaining. It looks like that's a mission that Lord and Miller are taking on. Not only have they created a kinetic animation style that plays on the iconography of LEGOs, but they clearly have woven in the kind of enthusiastic energy and goofy humor that made Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs a hit. Top that off with a voice cast that is not only audibly charming but also likely to appeal to grown-ups, and you've got an animated adventure that could well be worth the price of admission…not to mention the inspiration to buy more LEGO playsets immediately.
The LEGO Movie will come together in time to hit theaters on February 7th, 2014.
