There's no problem a clever joke can't fix in "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part." The maxim holds true in the animated Lego world, the live-action real world and the filmmakers' world as well. Whenever plotlines and logic fail in this sequel, a bit of humor always comes to the rescue.
Fans will remember that 2014's "The Lego Movie" was the wildly inventive story of a humble construction worker, Emmet (the voice of Chris Pratt), who saves Lego civilization from the tyrannical Lord Business (Will Ferrell). But there was a meta-story: A human boy, Finn (Jadon Sand), was play-acting the entire thing as a way to communicate his feelings. Directed and written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, "The Lego Movie" had complicated themes to match its elaborate, stop-motion-style animation (by the studio Animal Logic). As might be expected, the sequel overcomplicates things in an attempt to one-up the original. The result is frenetic and scattered, but mostly entertaining.
Where "The Lego Movie" doubled as a satire of consumerism, the sequel doubles as a satire of itself. After we last saw Emmet and his girlfriend, Lucy (Elizabeth Banks), invaders from the planet Duplo (all with cutesy toddler voices) clumsily destroyed their city. "From the wreckage," says Lucy in mock-serious narration, "we built a grittier, cooler, more mature civilization." It's a foreshadowing of themes to come: Big kids versus babies, tough versus tender.
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