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.
