A Lego Brickumentary

There's a lot of branding being done in "A LEGO Brickumentary." The designers who work for the company, for instance, are not actually designers -- they're "Master Builders." And the adults who purchase the products and use them to increasingly creative ends are not merely fans -- they're "A.F.O.L.," meaning "Adult Fans of Lego." Look at the title: Even the word "documentary" has been bricked by the Danish company's PR department.

Jason Bateman voices a Lego figurine who, in the style of a network news anchor, walks us through numerous fluff-stories regarding Lego fandom: Architects who build their models using the bricks, competitive enthusiasts who engage in Lego tournaments, and even a man who makes his living selling Lego-sized replicas of modern weapons. "It's an art form,"
he says. And this "Brickumentary" is inclined to agree with him.

The film, directed by Kief Davidson and Daniel Junge, takes it as a given that you see the same artistry in the toys that the proprietor of Brickarms does. (Yes, that's what he calls his Lego-sized M-16s.) And so celebratory factoids -- "there are 100 Lego pieces for every person on the planet" -- are dropped into the narration like plastic molds onto the conveyor belt. Hyperbolic assessments intrude just as often: Lego bricks, mini-Bateman tells us, have "ushered in a new era of creativity... for a whole generation." Even the film's leaden transitions are afflicted by the masturbatory tone. The one segment on the business' down years is introduced by Bateman asking, "How did the Lego company get so huge?"

The "Brickumentary" continues down those carefully-manufactured lines, with Bateman carrying us from one celebratory sequence to another. We meet B-list celebs who stump for the toys (Dwight Howard, directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and one of the "South Park" guys), some of the company's builders (among them Jamie Berard, who recurs throughout the film thanks to his continued involvement in "brick conventions"), and artists who employ the toys in their work. One sequence documents the work of a teenaged "brick filmmaker," who creates short, stop-motion films populated by Lego characters inside Lego sets. We learn nothing about his other interests or inspirations; we don't even see his bedroom. But we do get to see his mom make a cutesy joke about how much space all the boy's toys take up in her garage. Maybe this lightweight, local news feature-style approach isn't necessarily bad. But there isn't anything good about it.

This is not a screed against the Lego company. We hold no grudges against their double-branded double-fisted hold on the toy market. (Lego Star Wars! Lego Batman! Lego Bateman!) But a movie owes its viewers more than just recognizable products. And that's all that "Brickumentary" is interested in doing: Pushing product. The unrelenting self-mythologization, the rigidly delineated structuring, the unwaveringly upbeat tone, and the awful humor -- the movie plays like an overproduced executive-training video. They shouldn't be charging admission to see this movie. Lego should be paying you.