A LEGO Brickumentary (2015)

LEGOs are a whole thing nowadays. Well, if I'm being honest, and I like to be honest, it's been a thing for quite a while now. There are annual conventions. There are subcultures devoted to building from a kit or building freeform fun or to particular collectible sets. It's a toy that's as attractive to adults as it is to kids, and it doesn't show signs of slowing down.Now, when I was growing up, there weren't very many LEGO sets. The space one was considered a Big Deal around my house. The LEGO guy had an astronaut helmet! And there were all kinds of pieces you could use to build a wacky spaceship, directions be darned. In fact, I don't remember ever following directions for a LEGO set. We'd just pick up pieces and see what happened. Nowadays, though, there are thousands of themed sets, from Harry Potter and Star Wars to the old classics like pirate ships or the aforementioned astronauts. And with the huge success of The LEGO Movie, The LEGO Batman Movie, and the LEGO Ninjago Movie, it's hard to see the product's popularly dwindling anytime soon.This documentary touches on everything LEGO, from its old-timey beginnings as an amusing pastime for the kiddies to the marketing behemoth it's become. We learn how LEGOs are used in a New Jersey school to help autistic children communicate. We learn that people have used LEGOs to make actual, usable, real life things like houses and cars. We learn that LEGO can even be used as an art medium. We learn, too, that the LEGO company itself evolved from being a typical create-from-within corporation to one that gladly welcomes the ideas and visions of its customers, even holding contests to get new ideas for LEGO products.This Brickumentary is a fine film. There are plenty of human-interest stories, as one might expect, and more than one will jerk at the ol' heart strings. And, as noted above, there are also several real-world applications on display. When's the last time you saw a toy being used by adults to produce practical results? Probably half past never! Sure, it's a huge commercial. There aren't many warts on display, no disfigured minifigs. But that's okay – the universal appeal of the toy made me happy to learn more about it. If you're looking for a tell-all, keep walking. But if not… this film fits like, uh, two interlocking bricks, or something.

Confession: I am documentary junkie. That said, this film was not exactly a work of art. It has the feeling of an IMAX or theme park film, but don't let that stop you.The story of Lego is reminiscent of many titans of business; big ideas growing out of a small shop, and so forth. What this movie is really about though is summed up in this statement: "99% of the smartest people in the world do not work for us." Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen explains as he recounts the near death experience of Lego in the early 2000's. Clearly Lego is *capitalizing on their success. As such, this movie shows how great of a company Lego is; and to be honest, Lego seems to deserving of all the attention it has been getting. But this "Brickumentary" is more than that. It is also a window into the immensely diverse world of Lego fanboys and girls, (think Bronys,Trekkies, et.al.), and lets us in to the way Lego utilizes "crowd-sourcing", something Lego appears to have been on the cutting edge of. It shows us how Lego has become a medium for the arts, a tool of scientific inquiry, and how little kids who started with a box of plastic bricks were later inspired to engineering things that have helped us in the real world. My family loved it. Looking forward to watching it again soon. (PS: my only complaint is that there is a split second or two of non-kid friendly content. Surely the filmmakers knew that their audience would predominantly be children. Some things are better left unsaid or in this case, un-shown...)

I grew up in Belgium, and as a young kid in the 1960s, LEGO was one of my primary toys. I must've spent hundreds of hours playing and building LEGO stuff. Then I passed on the love for LEGO to my young son here in the US 30 years later. When I found out that, if not parallel with, then certainly as a result of the smashing success of the (CGI, not brick-made) "Lego Movie", a documentary was being made about the LEGO phenomenon, I couldn't wait to see it."A LEGO Brickumentary" (2014 release from Denmark and the US; 93 min.) opens with seeing 3 LEGO minifigs on a space ship, and the narrator (Jason Bateman) telling us he'll explain later what that is about. Soon after, we get a LEGO 101 on the company's roots and history. But it's not too long before we finally get what we all came to see this for: bigger, better, ever more imaginative if not out-right exotic LEGO creations. Along the way, we get the LEGO celebrity fans (Ed Sheeran singing his hit single "Lego House", NBA player Dwight Howard, etc.). Co-directors Kief Davidson and Daniel Junge decide to keep things very light-hearted. There is only the slightest critical comment about LEGO, and even there, it's turned into a plus for LEGO (how the company turned things around financially by listening better to its customers). The best part of the movie comes in the second half, when the co-directors look at the possible therapeutic effects of playing with LEGO, and also where a Danish university math professor examines whether he can come up with a formula for finding how many different positions just 6 or 7 LEGO bricks can be used/interlocked.In the end this film is nothing more than an unabashed love letter to LEGO. It's pleasant (to see the LEGO creations) but it's also devoid of any critical tone, and hence there is also no strong narrative that pulls you in, reason that I rate this 6 stars. The movie opened just this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. The early evening screening where I saw this at was not particularly well attended, which really surprised me. Given the strong brand that LEGO is and the very positive response to The LEGO Movie, I would've expected more people for that on its opening weekend. If you are a LEGO fan, you should definitely check this out, but you should also keep your expectations modest. If you are not into LEGO, I'd suggest you check out something else to see.

"LEGO toys build anything. Especially pride." LEGO A LEGO Brickumentary is a memorable documentary about one of the world's most successful businesses devoted to only one toy, but perhaps the most creative toy ever devised. Although the doc could be considered an extended ad for the little building blocks, and in a way it is whether the filmmakers mean it or not, the film is a colorful—in all senses of the word—history. Its founders and artists are more creative and enthusiastic, I suspect, than even lucky Google employees.Or maybe even eccentric: the founder, Ole Kirk Christiansen, kept building new factories after at least three in a row burned down, the first one the original LEGO factory in Denmark. That joyful determination pervades the enterprise, where artists and scientists collaborate (Lego is a model of creativity sharing) like brainy kids given their first Gilbert chemistry sets.If one doesn't work for LEGO, it doesn't mean you aren't invested in the product: Brickartist Nathan Sawaya in Manhattan claims to spend more than $100,000 a year on the bricks. His full-size human and animal LEGO artworks show his investment and enthusiasm as well as mesmerizing subjects.It's worth seeing if only for the grand creations such as a full-sized plane and a village so beautifully appointed you'll want to shrink just to live there. If I sound rhapsodic, then so be it, for I am good with following the instructions when my grandson Toby and I put a themed model together. I leave digging out old bricks to create something unique to Toby.If you loved The Lego Movie, this doc will show you the models used in that lovable film, and if you wonder what AFOLS is (Adult Fans of LEGO), or if you're curious how LEGOs are used in therapy, then sit back and relax with this unusual Brickumentary.