I've had a very strange reaction when it comes to the Lego movies made by Warner Bros. Animation. When "The Lego Movie" came out in 2014, I didn't have high expectations going into it but ended up loving it. After that came two spinoff movies in 2017. While "The Lego Batman Movie" ended up being a very hilarious and fun comedy, "The Lego Ninjago Movie" ended up being a massive disappointment due to how cliched it was and boring it was. In my review for the latter, I remember writing that I hoped the official sequel to "The Lego Movie" would be good due to how worried I was with the direction the series was going. Fortunately though, I'm happy to report that "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part" is indeed a good movie and a fun sequel. It's been a while since I've seen a sequel this funny in a while, but this film did the trick. I really did like it.
Five years after the first film, the city of Bricksburg has become an apocalyptic wasteland due to the constant invasion of the aliens from Planet Duplo. While everyone like Lucy (Elizabeth Banks), Batman (Will Arnett), Unikitty (Allison Brie), Metalbeard (Nick Offerman), and Benny (Charlie Day) have adjusted to this grim style, the optimistic Emmet (Chris Pratt) has still remained upbeat and happy and plans on moving with Lucy to a new home he built. Though one day, a new invader known as General Sweet Mayhem (Stephanie Beatriz) arrives in the wasteland and kidnaps all but Emmet to take them into the Systar System where their leader Queen Watevra Wa-Nabi (Tiffany Haddish) plans to start a wedding that could possibly start the dreaded "Our-Mom-Ageddon". Wanting to save his friends, Emmet goes off to the Systar System where he meets Rex Dangervest (also Pratt), a rough and tough galaxy-defending archaeologist, cowboy and raptor trainer who Emmet immediately idols and strives to be like. Will Emmet save his friends from the Systar System and stop the dreaded "Our-Mom-Ageddon"? Well, you'll have to see the movie in order to find out.
The story really is a lot of fun and also had another great deconstruction on Lego's themselves. While the first film distinguished them not only as being collector's items but also ways to build new creative ideas, this film showed how the ways boys play with them are different than the way girls do. I found that to be really clever. Not only that, but it was also funny. I really loved some of the jokes that Phil Lord and Chris Miller put into this film and the trailers were very smart on not spoiling any of them. There was one joke involving a cameo which made me laugh so hard that it could possibly rival Stan Lee's cameo in "Teen Titans Go! to The Movies". As for the animation, it's once again fantastic. I still can't believe how great it looks. I don't know how Animal Logic is able to make it seem like it's stop motion, but wow are they able to pull it off. It really is some amazing computer animation. As for the characters, they all once again had the same likable charm that made them great in the first movie. Emmet is just as sweet and loveable as ever, and even Lucy has an interesting character arc in the film. I also really liked the new characters. Queen Watevra Wa-Nabi was really fun and had a very funny scene with Batman and even General Sweet Mayhem shares a funny scene with Lucy. I even thought Rex being a parody of the huge characters Chris Pratt has played since the first Lego Movie was also a very clever idea. One thing I also have to talk about the songs as well because they are really memorable. If you thought "Everything Was Awesome" was annoying, then you're gonna get sick of "Catchy Song". I mean, the lyrics are "This song's gonna get stuck inside your head". Good luck trying to get it out. With all that said, you might be thinking that this is a sequel is just as good if not better than the original. Well, sadly it's not and the reason why is because of a character plot twist that happens in the third act that I didn't get. Seeing it in the theater left me incredibly confused and the more I thought about it on the way home, the more plot holes it started to open up. I'm not gonna spoil what exactly the twist was, but let's just say it was a pretty terrible one that did affect my enjoyment of the movie a bit.
In the end though, I still really liked "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part". The story was very funny and had some great jokes, the animation was beautiful and felt like stop motion once again, and the characters still have the same loveable charm that made them great in the first film. While the first film might've raised the bar too high for its sequels and inspirations to beat, I still think this film did work in the end and was still a lot of fun. It may not be as groundbreaking as the first, but it's still a good movie. I'll take a good movie any day.
