Utumishi Blog

(or, how to see complexity that might not be there in children’s films)

I finally got around to watching ‘The LEGO Movie’, so you know what time it is! Indulgent-thoughts-from-another-film-translated-into-a-rambling-blog-post time!

This film had oodles going for it. Will Arnett and Liam Neeson are two voices I will gladly listen to for hours. The jokes were charming. And there was unexpected depth here, too. Which got me thinking about creativity. (Spoilers are going to follow, so if that’s a big thing for you, stop reading…now.)

I think the biggest questions this film raised were that of creativity and the creator. Essentially, there were two creative forces in the film: a child, whose imagination drives his playing with the pieces, and then his adult father (for whom the whole pursuit is rooted in nostalgia), ‘the Man upstairs’, who is all about boundaries. Each set belongs together, and the toys are more…