Yes, you're reading this right. The Lego Movie is one of the ten best movies of the year. Thanks to Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who are marking themselves out as go-to men for hard-to-realise project (they're currently linked to a Spider-Man movie), what looked like a blatant product placement exercise that would give Transformers artistic merit by comparison ended up being a flick so subversive it's shocking the Danish foot-poker maker signed off on it. The humour is zany and ridiculous, while the visual style (it's all computer generated, but intended to look like traditional Lego stop-motion videos) is unrelentingly jaw-dropping, although The Lego Movie's real (and if anything, under-sung) strength is its script. Crafting a world with its own crazy, but in and of itself logical, rules, the third act pulls back to reveal the real order in the world. It's one of the year's best twists and retroactively highlights just how astute Lord and Miller's writing is. Touching on complex social ideals and the individual's role in society, the film is proof that you really can build anything with Lego. The only real slight against the film is that its overt message - use your imagination - is offset by Lego releasing seventeen building sets inspired by the movie.
