Is Everything Awesome about this Lego Masterpiece?
- Antony Cirocco
- May 6
- 5 min read
Film Title: “Piece by Piece”
Dir: Morgan Neville
Release Date: August 30, 2024
Review by Antony Cirocco
"Piece by Piece" is a feature-length documentary. It looks a lot like a LEGO movie, but in fact it’s the biography of Pharrell Williams…told using LEGO, well, LEGO animation. It was directed by Morgan Neville, who previously made “Steve!”, the Steve Martin mini series for Apple TV and has made other documentaries about Lorne Michaels of SNL fame and the K-pop super group BTS. He is an experienced, seasoned documentary specialist. This sourjourn deep into LEGO territory is a curious one… but it kinda works for the right audience.
This animated feature documentary cost $16million to make but with a $10 million box office (released in 1865) theatres across the USA, it was considered a flop. Culturally, though this work has another kind of value, it broke new ground and reached out to a new audience.
This documentary features interviews with some music scene luminaries, such as Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake, Jay-Z, and Daft Punk; the list goes on. Archival audio of Carl Sagan is incorporated as a voice that shaped Pharrell’s philosophy on life.
There is a lot of music, mostly Pharrell's, but there is a lot of music from influential musicians that shaped his listening palette.
So it’s a documentary telling the life story of Pharrell, before he died (fear not, he’s still alive) and using LEGO and packed with his own music as told by him and his friends. If you accept this film as just this, it’s got a rhythm and an energy that makes it an enjoyable experience. It’s colourful, full of dancing LEGO, but the storytelling process remains the same. Pharrell goes on his life journey, driven by a love of music and encounters challenges along the way, even a stint of the music equivalent of writer's block, oh and getting fired from McDonald's.
It’s ok to not take the documentary seriously. Don’t get me wrong, I am all in when it comes to groundbreaking documentaries about war, crime, corruption etc. This is and will always be the good work of documentary, to hold a mirror up to society and to engage quality investigative journalism and break down tough stories and shine a light on parts of the world that normally never see the light of day…this film is not any of that, but is it less “worthy”?...Well, yes, but it still has a place in our cultural sphere, and there were opportunities here to break down the dark parts of the music business and the complex makeup of elements of the American cultural zeitgeist….but it doesn’t. It’s blinkered in that sense…. But I will get to that.
It appears as though interviews were shot, with the full intention of making a documentary with the usual live-action footage that traditionally comes with documentary interviews; however, at some point, the documentary took a creative right turn and didn’t look back.
Much of the story is the retelling of Pharrell’s early career and making his way through the emerging artist process to land as an established artist, and I am guessing that, as there was not a lot of footage from that period of his life, this would have sparked the idea to remake those scenes at first through reenactments. If you look at the career and life of Pharrell, it won’t take long to see that he is more than a musician; he is a creative, curating his life one image at a time. At some point in the early preproduction, I will take another guess that one of his kids were in love with “The Lego Movie” released in 2014, and one thing leads to another and Pharrell is $16million in the hole with a radically different documentary, that on many artistic level makes a lot of sense to a lot of people but not enough to drive the numbers to the cinema and cross over into a meaning financial return. In fact, the opposite happened, and the film registered an approximate $6Million dollar loss.
If we consider the scenes where we hear Pharrell’s voice from the interview and we see a vision of LEGO mini figures jumping around the scene as reenactments, then we can see that the director has made a film based on interviews and reenactments…albeit made from LEGO. Now that we have landed on that creative device, it’s then possible to reenact all the scenes that Pharrell can recall from his past and make, essentially, a quite fluid and detailed retelling of his early career, on that level…it’s genius. However, therein lies the rub… how much retelling of a constructed history is really real? If you make a pork chop in a laboratory…is it a pork chop? Or if the audience doesn’t care for how the pork chop was made but just really likes the taste of pork chops… do they care? Filmmakers care, documentary makers care, Journalists care, film critics care, everyone else, meh, not so much. This film is made for an audience with remnants of the documentary process and ethical and moral constraints, but it’s not groundbreaking in any way, shape or form. It looks great, and the soundtrack is amazing. However, I’m not sure that for $16million it needed to be a documentary; it might have been better as a scripted drama, in LEGO.
As far as production design and animation go, this work is top shelf. The backgrounds, the locations, all look authentic (by LEGO standards). The props are all authentic LEGO figures, and even Pharrell's synesthesia is represented by colourful LEGO, helping young people imagine how that augmented sensory perception might work. It’s really intelligent, clever work. The minifigures of all the celebrities are also a highlight. Snoop Dogg even has a pair of extra blocks under his feet to demonstrate his height.
There is an issue with this film in regard to the ethical editorial balance, but it’s not the only film that experiences such difficulties. It’s impossible for a biography to be told without fear or favour in a scenario where the key character in the story, Pharrell, paid for the production and was an executive producer. Remember, Pharrell’s net worth is $250million, for him to drop $16million to control the narrative of his life and cement his legacy is not really that big a commitment. Noting also that “The Lego Movie” made just under $500million dollars on release, you could argue that Pharrell was invested in his legacy but possibly was looking for a windfall on the film's release.
This documentary film is worth your time; it's excellent. If not for the underdog story and the hope that his story can bring, then for the music. Kids will love the LEGO experience. This film features a plethora of excellent Pharrell Williams-produced songs, which is ultimately the element of this documentary production that really sets it apart; the LEGO component is a novelty; the musical body of work is a quarter of a century in the making.
This is a different and unique way of telling a factual story, but at $16million USD in production costs, it is going to be a one of a kind. Sure, there are animated documentaries, but LEGO? That’s unique…like Pharrell.
This film is looking likely to be one of a kind, it is well worth your time. Make sure you turn your speakers up!
This is a great documentary, it’s quirky with a beat 4 out of 5
Review by Antony Cirocco
Piece by Piece Documentary Trailer on YouTube here -
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