Movie Legos

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At the urging of my son, I went to see The Lego Movie yesterday.  And it was, yes, both witty and entertaining.  I do not regret going to see it.

But it was also . . . How shall I put this? . . . absolutely predictable.

Did anybody doubt for an instant that Emmet would get the girl?  That just before the good guys could save the day, they'd all be captured and it would look like the bad guys had triumphed?  That the villain would be reformed?  That father and son would be reconciled?

Oh yeah, spoiler alert.  As if you needed it.

I have no complaint about the movie.  The small children for whom it was made clearly loved it.  And that's good.  What grinches me is that every big-budget movie these days seems to be constructed on the same grid, with the same plot twists.  It's as if they were all given a huge tub of Movie Lego pieces and told, "Go to it!"

You can make all kinds of things with Legos.  But you can't make a working cyclotron.  Or a human liver.  Or a suit that you'd care to wear.  And with Movie Legos, you may be able to make many admirable entertainments.  But you couldn't make a Casablanca, a Citizen Kane, a Vertigo.  

I may have to swear off big budget movies for a while.

And as always . . .

I'm on the road again.  See you when I get back!

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