Directors: Charlie
Bean, Paul Fisher, Bob Logan.
Cast: Dave
Franco, Justin Theroux, Fred Armisen, Kumail Nanjiani, Michael Peña,
Abbi Jacobson, Zach Woods, Jackie Chan (voices).
Certification: U
Run time: 101
Minutes
Back in 2014 the Warner
Animation Group and directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller
brought us The LEGO Movie, a highly anticipated production that
bought a unique and welcome refresh to the animation movie genre.
It was inevitable that
the film would expand into a major franchise showcasing the LEGO
brand and in 2017 it was followed up with the incredibly popular LEGO
Batman Movie. Now LEGO is back for a third outing with the LEGO
Ninjago Movie.
We are introduced to
Ninjago City in the LEGO universe which in typical LEGO style is
massively explosive and a huge amount of fun right from the very
start. I can certainly see a large amount of MOC's in the future,
relating to set pieces used in the movie. It was at this point I could see it looked more computer generated than its predecessors, the
CG stop frame animation effect of the other movies seemed less of a
priority this time round.
Ninjago City comes
under constant attack from Lord Garmadon the father of Lloyd
Garmadon. Lloyd is ridiculed by the residents of Ninjago City because
of his fathers actions, even though unbeknown to them Lloyd together
with Nya, Zane, Jay, Cole, Kai and Master Wu are actually part of the
secret Ninja force which regularly thwart the attempts made by Lord
Garmadon to rule over Ninjago City.
The ultimate weapon is
used and destroyed during another take over attempt by Lord Garmadon,
leading our heroes in their journey to search for the ultimate,
ultimate weapon. The movie starts on its downward spiral from this
point on, the jokes waned quickly while Lloyd's Daddy issues and bland storyline dominated a large part of the movie.
Quickly it was clear to
see that the movie is a world away from the seven well established
seasons of the television show. Lloyd and his father became the
forefront of the movie with the remainder of the characters almost
just extras in the background, I was left puzzled at the small roles
played by what has previously been quite an equal team.
The previous two movies
have always been very witty and comedic, especially Batman in which
you were bombarded with non stop one liners, some of which were clearly
directed at adults and would have been lost on children.
With its simple
storyline and childish humour this time round the Ninjago Movie is
all about the children and they'll love it for sure, but for AFOL's
and parents although visually stunning the movie becomes rather dull,
rather quickly.
With Ninjago being a
huge staple of the LEGO Group for quite sometime now, it leaves me a
little lost as to why it didn't deserve a little more respect to it's
origins ? The LEGO Ninjago Movie will no doubt be loved by children
but just doesn't reach the very high bar set by its predecessors,
so from me it scores a 2/5.
