Building beats in full color

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, October 11th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming up on The World and Everything in It: Arts and Culture Editor Collin Garbarino reviews a new documentary told in Lego animation. But first, he takes stock of what’s currently in theaters.

COLLIN GARBARINO: At the beginning of the summer, things were looking pretty desperate for the movie industry with big budget action movies flopping in the month of May. Things got a little better as the summer wore on, with both Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine each grossing more than a billion dollars worldwide.

But now that we’re slipping into fall, the movie industry seems to have fallen back into its slump. A couple of weeks ago, Francis Ford Coppola’s 150-million-dollar epic Megalopolis barely made a blip at the box office. And last weekend, the sequel to Warner Bros’ billion-dollar grossing Joker film from 2019 crashed and burned. Joker: Folie á Deux violated the most important rule of comic book movies: Don’t be boring. The film also included some musical numbers… another no-no for today’s popular cinema. It didn’t help that star Joaquin Phoenix can’t sing.

The film cost 200 million dollars to make. A month ago, analysts predicted it would make more than 100 million in its opening weekend, but it only pulled in 37 million, ensuring that Warner Bros. will certainly lose money.

Since everyone thought the Joker sequel would be dominating theaters, there aren’t many new releases arriving this weekend. But there are a couple of movies based on real people debuting.

First, there’s The Apprentice. It’s the controversial biopic starring Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump that alleges the former president learned how to be ruthless from shady New York super lawyer Roy Cohn. I’ll just say this: Whether you’re a Trump supporter or not, don’t go see it. It might capture the gritty feel of 1970s New York City, but the movie is both simplistic and utterly debased.

On the other hand, hip-hop fans might be interested in the documentary Piece by Piece that tells the story of megaproducer Pharrell Williams.

MORGAN NEVILLE: Hey, Pharrell.

PHARRELL WILLIAMS: Hey, how you doing, man? You know what would be cool was if we told my story with Lego pieces.

MORGAN NEVILLE: Seriously?

PHARRELL WILLIAMS: Yes.

Piece by Piece is an odd little film. It has the sound and style of a typical documentary, but the entire film is made with Lego animation. The talking head interviews, the scenes from everyday life, the reenactments of pivotal moments—all Lego.

PHARRELL WILLIAMS: I loved music. Like, everybody loves music, but I’m realizing I had a different kind of relationship with it.

Williams takes the audience back to his humble childhood in Virginia Beach where he first fell in love with music. We see the sights and sounds of his early life that would shape his musical career.

PHARRELL WILLIAMS: I didn’t even know that I was mesmerized. I just thought that’s what all black kids did. I thought we all just stared into the speaker like “whoa.”

The choice of using colorful Lego bricks to animate Williams’ life starts to make sense as we see the music popping across the screen.

PHARRELL WILLIAMS: I was seeing colors. It’s called synesthesia. It’s not something you see with your physical eyes. It’s something that you see in your mind’s eye.

Not only does the Lego animation give the documentary the pop of color that Pharrell Williams is known for in his wardrobe choices, it also helps blur the line between the interviews and reenactments. But fundamentally, the Lego style becomes something of a metaphor for building a life. Just like kids build structures with colorful bricks, Williams and his producing partner Chad Hugo build musical beats. They turn those beats into songs which they then produce for the hottest hip-hop and pop stars. The documentary features voicework from Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Justin Timberlake, and Snoop Dog. The 6-foot-four Snoop is depicted with a hilariously tall minifigure.

SNOOP DOG: This is beautiful work that you’ve been doing.

PHARRELL WILLIAMS: Thank you, man.

SNOOP DOG: This is what I want though, P.

Piece by Piece is rated PG, but I wouldn’t recommend taking young children to see it. I was actually quite surprised the movie wasn’t rated PG-13 for language. There’s more than one instance of vulgarity used in the film. A couple of times the coarse language is bleeped out. A couple of times it’s not. There are also quite a few Lego minifigures in bikinis during the reenactment of certain rap videos. It’s pretty funny, but no doubt some viewers will find it in poor taste.

Williams obviously hopes to inspire the next generation of dreamers with his story, and I think the movie would be worthwhile for teenagers who are interested in the music business. But Williams seems to think that success has allowed him to wax philosophical on how to make it in life. He offers the typical cliches that promise success to anyone who believes in themselves, drawing inspiration from a strange variety of sources that include both his childhood pastor and Carl Sagan. And since Williams is the film’s producer Piece by Piece cleans up some of the messier parts of his life and ensures he comes across looking good.

The climax of the film comes when Williams writes and records his megahit “Happy.” The catchy song is packed with so much joy, it’s quite possible it might leave audiences feeling so good that they overlook the film’s shortcomings.

I’m Collin Garbarino.

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