Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s follow-up to their animated hit is a flat re-mix that tells kids sometimes everything’s not awesome — and that’s okay.
Everyone’s gotta grow up sometimes, even animated movie franchises. Kids’ movies, like the rest of us, find themselves in a difficult position these days: Ignore the sense of impending doom and pretend everything is, well… awesome? Or address the Cheeto-tinted elephant in the room, at least nominally? In “The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part,” director Mike Mitchell, along with writers and producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller and a cadre of other scribes, decided to re-mix the first movie’s annoyingly catchy theme song, “Everything Is Awesome,” reminding kids and adults alike that sometimes everything isn’t awesome — and that’s okay. Unfortunately, that message of mediocrity applies more to the actual movie than anything else.
The movie opens with a live-action flash of Dad (Will Ferrell) and Finn (Jadon Sand) playing LEGO, before Dad says it’s time to “invite your sister.” Cue the ominous music, and we’re back to our stubbornly sunny LEGO builder Emmett Brickowski (Chris Pratt), whose perennial optimism hasn’t faded in the slightest, despite now inhabiting a flaming, garbage-filled apocalypse town. Since Hollywood writers never met a Brooklyn jab they didn’t like, this new garbage town has been dubbed Apocalypsburg. As its predecessor did with “The Matrix,” “The LEGO Movie 2” borrows heavily from popular sci-fi movies, and the sand dunes and sewer babies of Emmett’s new home bear a striking resemblance to “Mad Max: Fury Road.”
