Remember when we all thought The Lego Movie was going to be a hopelessly cynical cash grab? Well now we have the Lego musical biography in Piece By Piece, an authorised animated documentary that enlists the monolithic brand to tell the story of an eclectic, mega-popular artist. Check your cynicism, because the movie works!
The subject is Pharrell Williams, the singer and producer behind so many of our favourite beats – including Happy, the gratingly cheery earworm that helped sell the Despicable Me sequel and become a phenomenon all on its own. Packaging his story in brightly coloured Lego more than makes sense. Just listening to Pharrell’s music – which often mashes together odd elements from hip-hop, hard rock and disco – you picture a kid who would put incongruent pieces from the Vincent Van Gogh and Star Wars Lego sets together to create a magically vibrant world of his own.
We’re in that world in Piece By Piece, a hilarious, propulsive and disarmingly joyous ride. Pharrell’s a great choice for an animated biography, not just because Happy makes him Minions-adjacent, but because his music is even more widely appealing than Taylor Swift’s. Even if you’re not a Pharrell fan, he probably helped one of your faves – whether it’s Pusha T, Beyoncé, Gwen Stefani or Britney Spears – make some of their biggest hits.
The director, Morgan Neville, whose previous documentary subjects have included Fred Rogers in Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and Anthony Bourdain in Road Runner, has another crowdpleaser on his hands, one that gets away with a degree of superficiality because of its playfulness. We’re not learning anything particularly new or revelatory about the artist at its centre. Pharrell’s rags-to-riches story is a familiar tale re-energised not just with his unique sound but the basic decision to animate his life so that it can thrive with his imagination and hit so many visual grace notes.
For instance, instead of capturing the Virginia Beach project housing (where Pharrell grew up) as it is, Neville conjures how he feels it: a sunny celebratory cook-out where everyone’s enjoying the good vibes. Pharrell’s school’s cafeteria, also populated by a young Timbaland and Missy Elliott, becomes a petri dish where musical talent is coursing between the tables, complete with club lights and a marching band. And whenever Pharrell produces beats – not unlike a Master Builder from The Lego Movie – they’re visualised as magical glowing orbs barely containing some new, bumping sound.
In one anecdote from Pharrell and his Neptunes partner Chad Hugo’s early beatmaking days, rapper NORE recalls being handed a package: a beat to hold on to just before a trip to Miami, but with instructions not to open until arrival. The throbbing container has the wondrous presence of the suitcase in Pulp Fiction. When it’s cracked open, the twangy, bass-heavy pounding of NORE’s hit Superthug turns all the lights up in South Beach.
The animated pizazz only works because Pharrell and the titans recruited as talking heads (we hear from Missy Elliott, Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z and Pusha T, for starters) are natural orators with terrific origin stories to tell, beginning with how Pharrell was discovered. When the R&B super producer Teddy Riley planted his recording studios near Pharrell’s school, two female police officers put pressure on him to do something for the community, which is what led to the talent show where the Neptunes make their first impression.
Pusha T speaks about how his childhood friend Pharrell rescued him from hustling with the music that would make his rap duo Clipse legendary. Snoop Dogg is here – in a cloud of smoke comically attributed to fog machines – to talk about how Pharrell gave him his first No 1 hit because Drop It Like It’s Hot was a track from the gangsta rapper that made people smile (and perhaps put the Death Row artist on track to become Uncle Snoop, the US’s Olympic ambassador). Jay-Z describes how rappers rallied to protect Pharrell, a creative genius who was not “street” and whose unbridled enthusiasm would occasionally be a liability.
There’s so much to laugh at but not much that counts for drama here. Pharrell’s memories of his late grandmother strike a touching note. When he hits a rough patch creatively, getting lost in lucrative deals for skincare, fashion and fragrance, the irony is not lost that we’re processing his soul searching within a Lego movie, yet another brand partnership.
Where Piece By Piece feels particularly thoughtful and thorny is when we arrive at Happy. There’s a gentle unease about Pharrell’s biggest hit, the song all over this movie’s trailer, which was cooked up because of yet another corporate partnership but nevertheless touched people who needed a frivolous escape.
Piece By Piece puts Happy in conversation with the concurrent rise of Black Lives Matter and protests against police brutality, before making way for Pharrell’s most meaningful contribution to hip-hop: producing Kendrick Lamar’s hard-hitting anthem Alright.
That’s a careful bit of narrative engineering, with Lamar’s track lending Piece By Piece an emotional weight that I’m not sure it earns. Sorry to be cynical about it – but we are still talking about a Lego movie …
Piece By Piece is screening at the Toronto film festival and will be released in US cinemas on 11 October and in the UK on 8 November
