The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017) Review!!!

Synopsis – Shunned by everyone for being the son of an evil warlord, a teenager seeks to defeat him with the help of his fellow ninjas.

My Take – Back in 2014, who would have thought, a film starring colorful plastic interlocking blocks, smaller stylized parts and anthropomorphic mini- figures would turn out to become such a success story. Earning about $469.2 million at the worldwide box office, The Lego Movie was an instant success upon release, showing off not just the passion for the Lego brand, but what it can be done on a cinematic level. Personally I believe that The Lego Movie not only capitalized on the blocks’ ability to let kids’ creativity run wild perfectly, but also earned itself a spot on one of the greatest animated films ever made. Continuing with a spin off, The Lego Batman Movie, which released earlier this year, was also quite competent on its own, both as comedy and as a coy satirical take on superhero films more generally, even though slightly less clever, but still remained fun. Keeping that in mind, this film is perfectly adequate on the level of cartoon-driven entertainment, I guess that’s all it sets out to be & so by that measure, it’s a rousing success, but by the measure of the film franchise it serves as the third installment for, it’s disappointingly just okay. Sure, this one has some good jokes and puns, and it’s not unpleasant to watch, but when it comes to ideas, it lacks the surprise from the first time and the sense of being in the in-group the second time around. Now it’s just forced laughter jumbled into the same chock-a-block world and lovingly wrapped around the same old themes of daddy issues and struggling to work as a team.

This film could have been much better, in comparison to the first two films it is not a patch in quality, judging it on its own its watchable but falls short, mainly as this unimaginative third installment is just focused on being a cinematic adaptation of a dull Cartoon Network series instead of catering to larger audience, something which made the 2014 film great. The story follows Lloyd (voiced by Dave Franco), a teenager living with his mother, Koko (voiced by Olivia Munn) in the city of Ninjago. Compared to other teens, Lloyd has a rather tough life, mainly as he is the son of the evil Lord Garmadon (voiced by Justin Theroux) who is constantly attacking Lloyd’s hometown with his army, leading to just about everyone in the city hating Lloyd. However, what no one knows about is that Lloyd has been living a double life as the masked Green Ninja, one of a group of young Ninjas, consisting of Red Ninja Kai (voiced by Michael Peña), Blue Ninja Jay (voiced by Kumail Nanjiani), Black Ninja Cole (voiced by Fred Armisen), Silver Ninja Nya (voiced by Abbi Jacobson) & White Ninja Zane (voiced by Zach Woods), who is actually a robot & refuses it, who constantly end up being the ones who thwart Garmadon’s attempts to take over the city. Training under the guidance of Master Wu (voiced by Jackie Chan), the teens are urged to harness the power of their distinctive individual elements completely in order to defeat Garmadon once and for all. While, Lloyd may be a skilled ninja, the fact of being hardly acknowledged by his father often distracts him, and despite Master Wu’s warning he inadvertently unleashes upon the “ultimate weapon” on Garmadon, accidentally giving the villain the edge and finds himself and the ninja force lost. In order to regain their force, Master Wu send them to cross the nearby forest to find the “ultimate, ultimate weapon” if they want to save Ninjango. That’s the basic setup, and it all unfurls in classic cartoon-film style, with Lloyd and Lord Garmadon winding up, through a series of expected events, fighting on the same side and having various revelations about themselves, their histories, and their relationships. As you can guess there’s nothing particularly special about this story seeing as it’s yet another superhero style narrative about saving the world from an evil overlord. As suggested by its unspectacular US box office haul, bad timing aside, the third of the hitherto excellent Lego Movies sequence is no doubt the weakest to date. Co- directed by Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher and Bob Logan (with Fisher and Logan contributing to the screenplay), this third feature in The Lego Movie franchise is simply a mess. Imagine what it would be like to take a big bucket of different Lego pieces and throw them into the air. That’s what much of this film looks like (and the script sounds like the writers did something similar with the words). The third act is more cohesive and somewhat more entertaining, but also more clichéd. The film also drags a lot though, in the middle of the film at least, and some scenes just aren’t very funny (or interesting at all). Unlike the other two franchise installments, the drama of the film didn’t work for me at all either. And the entire story is bookended by unnecessary, lackluster and extremely clichéd sequences. Stripped of its genre trappings, its specialty bricks and its unnecessary framing device with a live-action Jackie Chan, the film is left with many of the same things that worked the last two times. i.e. a self-effacing heroes journey where the story’s twists and turns boils down to absent fathers. Add to that the sneaking suspicion that I’m not just being sold LEGOs but Ninjago brand LEGOs and it becomes clear the glibness of the franchise as a whole is starting to show its shortcomings.

Though unlike the previous installments which zipped along with the quick witted jokes, the top-notch writing and the zappy kid-friendly comedic antics, this one fails to match the same level of creativity and laughs as the previous films have done. I understand that the film is trying to be an extended jab at those old Saturday morning cartoons where these kinds of stories were commonplace. In fact, for the first half hour, I was getting into this world and what was being shown. Thankfully, the film does inherit a bit of the sly humor from its predecessors. Remember how, when guns were fired in The LEGO Movie, the characters would make “pew pew pew” sounds? During one long battle scene, Garmadon actually fires sharks from (presumably) a shark cannon, and each time a shark is shot one hears “dun dun dun” aka the theme from Jaws. Later on, a bigger enemy is revealed, one that dwarfs Garmadon in destructiveness – a tabby, If you’ve ever wanted to see a cat demolish LEGOs that you didn’t have to pick up, now’s your chance. The bigger problem isn’t the lack of gags – it’s that the gags aren’t memorable. And this is mainly because the film becomes the very thing the original Lego Movie made fun of – disposable entertainment. Where the first Lego Movie mocked clichés, this one decided to embrace them. The film is very predictable and is also not very funny since most of the good jokes in the film were sadly given away in the first trailer and some of the running gags got old very fast. In fact, the film is nothing like I imagined. I imagined the film being a film that parodies martial arts film and focuses on the kids becoming the ninjas, but nope. Instead, their already ninjas and also is more of a father-son bonding film, something that has been milked to death. As the story went on, however, I kept thinking that there was more that could have been done. Why couldn’t there have been some more twists to the scenario? Why not have certain characters switch sides? The good films that traverse this territory at least make the characters or the battle scenes more interesting, but this film doesn’t have either of those. There’s a lot of explosions, shouting, ass kicking and frenetic action but its all loud and generic, bereft of charm or heart. Aside from the father-son relationship, the film is rather devoid of heart, with it being lots of chaotic and brash noise but little substance. The emotional back-story of the villain apart form makes no sense, and also don’t feel earned compared to the emotional moments in the first film and LEGO Batman. Even the ending felt pretty rushed and left many plot threads still up in the air. Like the first two films the animation is impressive, unlike them it’s not quite first rate (attention to detail isn’t as refined and the visuals aren’t as imaginative). The vibrant yet dynamic colors are remarkably vivid to the extent that it makes the eyes pop, the backgrounds are immaculately designed and the characters look remarkably good in LEGO form. The voice acting here is fine. While I did get laughs from Jackie Chan, Dave Franco and Justin Theroux, many of the other ninjas don’t get enough time to show off their personalities or even get out their own jokes, except for Zach Woods‘s robot ninja. Olivia Munn is also wasted. On the whole, ‘The Lego Ninjango Movie’ is a disappointing feature mainly as it is not as inventive, clever or funny as its predecessors.