The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part review: Brilliant, even if it doesn’t live up to the promise of the first film

The directors behind the 2014 film, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, return here only as screenwriters – yet little is lost in the transition

Director: Mike Mitchell. Starring: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Tiffany Haddish and Stephanie Beatriz. Cert: U, 107 mins

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part is the doomed progeny of a celebrated genius – brilliant but slightly stunted by the knowledge they will never live up to their predecessor. The first film, back in 2014, was a revelation: it proved that a feature-length corporate synergy exercise could have heart, that computer animation could be made to look convincingly like stop-motion, and that Warner Bros was capable of poking fun at how terrible Batman v Superman was. It also confirmed the reputation of its directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, as Hollywood alchemists, capable of spinning the most improbable of ideas into cinematic gold, from directors 21 Jump Street to their producer roles on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – leaving their dismissal from Solo: A Star Wars Story a lingering “what if”.

Here they return as screenwriters only, handing directing duties over to Trolls’ Mike Mitchell. There’s little, if anything, lost in the transition; The Lego Movie 2 is almost identical to the first in both style and tone. What proves tricky for the filmmakers, however, is finding an approach that feels as innovative as the original. Granted, it’s an almost impossible task.

The moment that established The Lego Movie as one of the decade’s most innovative animated films was the sudden final reel reveal that the events we’d just witnessed existed entirely within the imagination of an eight-year-old boy (Jadon Sand’s Finn), as the film switched suddenly from computer animation to live action. All these adventures had been, in fact, Finn’s way of working through his conflicted emotions about his emotionally stunted father (Will Ferrell). The sweet, goofy movie suddenly took a turn for the heartbreaking.

But that cat is out of the bag now, and while The Lego Movie 2 earnestly continues the parallel narratives between live action and computer animation, it no longer holds quite the same power. We open on Apocalypseburg, essentially a Lego-fied version of Mad Max, which has seen every mark of civilisation wiped out by invaders from Planet Duplo (a range of Lego for younger children) – a consequence of Finn’s father, at the end of the first film, demanding he share his Lego empire with his younger sister (The Florida Project’s Brooklynn Prince). Finn, as he grows older, now sees his playtime coloured by all things dark and brooding, with Batman (Will Arnett) as the most natural saviour; his sister, however, is more in favour of covering all things in glitter and stickers.

At its heart, the film offers a simple message for children: play nice with your siblings. Adults can take away their own version: put aside what makes us different, since there’s a lot we can learn from each other. It’s a central theme told in many different ways here. Our Lego heroes, including Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), are kidnapped by the ruler of the Systar System (get it?), Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi (Tiffany Haddish) – a pile of shapeshifting Lego bricks. She swears, in a musical number, she has no evil intentions, but hopes only that they’ll attend her upcoming wedding ceremony. Meanwhile, Emmett (Chris Pratt), still the chipper optimist we know and love, struggles to find his place in the gritty Apocalypseburg, but finds a surprise mentor in Rex Dangervest (Pratt doing a Kurt Russell impersonation), the “galaxy defending archaeologist, cowboy and raptor trainer” with “chiseled features previously hidden under baby fat”. It’s hard to resist interpreting it as a meta-commentary on Pratt’s own career transformation from loveable buffoon to action hero.

The Lego Movie 2 features a lot of moving parts and, inevitably, the result feels less streamlined. Yet, when it comes to pure entertainment, there’s little here to quarrel with. The jokes come just as fast, with as high a success rate, and they remember to aim as many jokes at the kids as the adults. The ingenious mishmash of pop culture reference remains intact: there’s a Lego Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a riff on Twilight, and even a jab at Radiohead. At times, you can see the studio executives at Warner Bros pulling the strings – Aquaman is suddenly very prominent, bellowing his signature “My man!” – but, for balance, there are just as many successful jibes at DC’s vast (and often confusing) universe. And The Lego Movie 2 achieves what two Jurassic World films could not: it gives its dinosaurs both subtitles and guns.

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part is released in UK cinemas on 8 February