Jackie Chan | Dr. Grob's Animation Review

Directors: Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher & Bob Logan
Release date: September 22, 2017
Rating: ★★
Review:

One of the biggest feature animation surprises of 2014 was ‘The Lego Movie’. On paper this joint venture between Warner Animation and the famous toy company from Denmark should have been something terrible. After all, it was based on an existing toy line, a recipe for disaster. But the opposite happened and ‘The Lego Movie’ turned out to be one of the funniest, most sophisticated, and deepest animation film of the 21st century. The film was followed in 2017 by the equally funny ‘The Lego Batman Movie’, deepening the title character as he appeared in ‘The Lego Movie’. Warner Animation and Lego were clearly on a roll.

Or were they? Appearing in the very same year as ‘The Lego Batman Movie’, ‘The Lego Ninjago Movie’ uses several of the ingredients of the previous films, but with a remarkably disappointing result. True, there are some good gags, especially those referring to the characters being made of Lego, but more often such gags feel like they have been done before, and better. Even worse, compared to the two earlier films, both the story, the world and the characters are very weakly developed. Apparently, the film was based on a long-lasting television series, but the film hardly betrays that fact. Instead, the movie feels as only half-baked, and assembled too quickly for its own good.

The problems of ‘The Lego Ninjago Movie’ are legion. The film uses elements of both wuxia and mecha films, but can’t satisfy lovers of either genre, as the film makers do very little with these elements. The whole setting of Lloyd being both the leader of the Ninjago squad and the son of Garmadon, the very nemesis they continually combat, is preposterous to start with. That these Ninjago warriors are also some teenager friends at a high school (even though one is a robot) only adds to the implausibility. So does the fact that Garmadon has four hands. The plot gets particularly silly when ‘the monster’ arrives, but when the Ninjago squad goes on a quest in a forest, the film seriously starts to drag. The son-dad relationship becomes a tried and tiresome cliché, and halfway one realizes he doesn’t care for these characters, at all. And then the overlong finale must start, yet…

On the top side the film starts with Jackie Chan, who is always pleasant to watch, even though he’s completely wasted in this film. And the textures of the Lego elements are surprisingly good, rendering them very tactile, indeed. Moreover, the film makes some surprising and rather silly choices in its use of pop music. But it should be clear that none of this can rescue a sloppy, lazy film that seriously lacks the heart and attention given to the first two Lego movies.

Watch the trailer for ‘The Lego Ninjago Movie’ yourself and tell me what you think: