Fish and Cherries Productions

Summary: Five years after the invasion from the Planet Duplo, the people of Bricksberg have rebuilt themselves darker and edgier in the form of Apocalypseberg. The only outlier is Emmet (Chris Pratt) who remains ever the cheerful optimist, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend Wildstyle/Lucy (Elizabeth Banks). That all changes when a strange otherworlder named General Mayhem (Stephanie Beatriz) abducts Lucy, Batman (Will Arnett), Benny (Charlie Day), Unikitty (Alison Brie), and Captain Metalbeard (Nick Offerman) to attend a matrimonial ceremony in the Systar System. Emmet mounts a rescue to save them, teaming up with an interstellar renegade named Rex Dangervest (Chris Pratt) and his starship crew of velociraptors to brave the dangers. But what does Queen Watevra Wa-Nabi (Tiffany Haddish), shapeshifting queen of the Systar System, have planned for our heroes? What will cause this conflict to end? And, above all else, who started it?

Review: The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part may not be as special as the first entry, but it’s still awesome, clever, and hilarious. I actually think I laughed more than a lot of the kids in the audience because there were loads of meta jokes and subtle references that would go over their heads. Or maybe I’m just easy to amuse. And now, I’d like to formally say that anyone who hasn’t seen The Lego Movie and isn’t privy to the twist in it to turn back now if they’d like to remain unspoiled. A lot of this movie builds off of that twist, making it nigh-impossible to talk about without touching on it. So going forward, consider this a blanket spoiler warning for the first movie.

Knowing that this entire story is essentially played out in the minds of two siblings — Finn (Jadon Sand) and Bianca (Brooklynn Prince) — speaks a lot to where they are maturity-wise. Apocalypseberg reflects that age when you’re trying to be edgy to appear more grown up while the Systar System (and yeah, that is absolutely the pun you think it is) harkens to the tween girl stage, full of glitter and romance with a non-threatening sexy vampire thrown in. It’s quite clever because I feel that they capture those points of adolescence in a bottle perfectly. This is one of the reasons I adored The Lego Movie — once you realize that the plot surrounding these toy characters is literally a child playing with these toys, it becomes a fascinating psychology study that this movie continues to build on from the last one.

Another strong point is the message about cooperation illustrated beside messages about communication, toxic masculinity (though that’s not explicitly stated so much as inferred), and the struggle of growing up. It’s a surprisingly mature message for a children’s film and it leads to a lot of heartbreaking and heartmelting moments. The movie’s full of moments like these, though of course there’s plenty of humor to be found too. The joke that cracked me up the hardest is when two Lego characters start fighting and the “fight” is just them bashing together as if in the hands of a child. It’s definitely a case of, “you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll kiss thirteen bucks goodbye.”

Of course, there’s a weak point or two I feel I should address. A lot of humor in this movie tends to boil down to “the joke is that they’re explaining the joke,” which is a bit funny but starts to come off as overdone after a while. Also, there’s a little something lost here, possibly because this movie doesn’t have a huge, mindblowing twist like the last one. It’s almost as if the lightning’s been let out of the bottle and what we’re left with is very pretty, but not quite as awesome. But it’s still a little bit awesome and overall, what I saw was a fun, clever, funny, and well-made Lego movie that’ll leave people satisfied. The verdict stands: everything is still awesome, even if it’s a little less so.

Fun Tidbit: TOO MANY TO LIST! Just… look up a list of references in The Lego Movie 2 and geek out to your heart’s content.