First Impressions Of Pharrell Williams Lego Biopic ‘Piece By Piece’ Are Mixed
Piece by Piece, the unconventional new cg-animated documentary by Morgan Neville, premiered last week at the Telluride Film Festival and the first impressions from critics have arrived.
The film, due for wide release on October 11, is a biopic of Pharrell Williams created in Lego style. It is being distributed by Focus Features, a subsidiary of Universal Pictures.
The general critical consensus is that the film, while conceptually original and fun, is a shallow hagiography and struggles to tell the story with Lego bricks.
Maureen Lee Lenker gave the film a B- for Entertainment Weekly, highlighting the “fresh take on a talking heads documentary,” but also criticizing its shortcomings:
While past memories and Pharrell’s childhood fantasies play out with whimsical fervor, other segments would have been better served with archival footage. I don’t want to see a Lego version of No Doubt or Justin Timberlake recording hit songs with Pharrell — show me the actual footage from the recording sessions! And it feels downright odd to watch something like Pharrell’s interview with Oprah recreated in Lego, rather than just seeing clips of the interview itself.
The concept becomes completely tonally dissonant in the documentary’s more emotional moments — it’s hard to feel pathos for Williams’s monumental loss of his grandmother when you’re watching a Lego figure fall to its knees in front of a Lego doctor. Particularly because Lego can’t cry; they can only pantomime emotion through the limited design of their faces.
Lovia Gyarkye for The Hollywood Reporter also said some parts of the film would have been better served by live footage, but highlighted areas where the animation actually enhanced the narrative:
Another strength of Piece By Piece is how the Lego animation enhances our understanding of Williams’ process. It can be challenging to represent creation in a documentary, but here Neville, with the help of editors Jason Zeldes, Aaron Wickenden and Oscar Vazquez, offers dynamic sequences that offer glimpses of how Williams’ mind works. The way Williams talks about matching beats to specific artists or finding just the right sound to round out a record affirms his genius. Beats become objects with lives of their own, meticulously catalogued and cared for by the artist.
Caleb Hammond in Indiewire reported that most people at Telluride thought the film was “fun” but also pointed out the film’s shallowness and its incongruous use of Lego to depict somber subject matter:
A late detour in this scattered third act looks at the BLM movement through Williams’ production of Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright.” It’s posited as an opening of Williams’ eyes to how he can use his art to fight injustice, but this brief sequence feels out of step with the rest of the looser, more casual narrative—an ill-footed attempt at thematic heft unearned by everything that preceded. But again, like so many other moments in Piece by Piece, the music does the heavy lifting: Williams’ otherworldly production matched with Lamar’s rapping are powerfully rendered on screen, even if the Lego framing here plays as a little ridiculous juxtaposed against the serious subject matter.
Another Hammond – Pete Hammond of Deadline – loved the film and thinks the film will inspire the young audience it wants to reach:
Piece by Piece doesn’t let those darker aspects of life overwhelm its PG-rated purpose, which is clearly to inspire dreamers like him, let creativity run free, and use music to make our lives (and his) driven with purpose and joy. After all, complex and entrepreneurial as he may be, Pharrell Williams is the man who wrote “Happy.”
Piece by Piece leaves you with hope and a whole bunch of songs you will not be able to get out of your head. Is it a documentary? A biopic? An animated movie? A musical? A character study? You bet — and more. Williams and Neville have taken it apart and put it all back together to perfection.
As a counterargument, Robert Daniels for RogerEbert.com offered a negative review and questioned who the film was made for:
Instead, the overstretched and underthought Piece by Piece constantly struggles to check the boxes of its genre requirements. The musical sequences lack originality, the Lego animation doesn’t go beyond the expected sheen, the biopic elements are too controlled and the humor is intermittent. Also: Who exactly is this movie for? With its heavy expletives, it’s certainly not for kids. And its animated nature makes you wonder how many adults will gravitate toward a movie trying to straddle the line between winking and clean. There are simply too many chunks missing from Piece by Piece for it to be as memorable as its subject.
