Review of The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017) by Alicia B — 29 Mar 2018

In the hybrid ninja/modern day city of Ninjago, Lloyd (Dave Franco) the Green Ninja and his fellow ninja friends are assigned to protect the city from evil forces by Master Wu (Jackie Chan). The only problem with this mission however is the most dangerous villain, Lord Garmadon (Justin Theroux) , also happens to be Lloyd's embarrassing dad....

Riding on the massive critical success on both The Lego Movie and this year's funniest film, The Lego Batman Movie, Warner Animation Group to no ones surprise, have brought us another helping of those lovable Danish building blocks this year, only this time instead of being based on a well-known property, Lego has chosen one of thier own toylines, the Lego Ninjago line as the subject of their next film.

Unfortunately, although people are not required to watch the still-airing Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitsu Cartoon Network series to understand the plot, as this film has little to no continuity with that show, the father/son realtionship theme between Lloyd and Garmadon, despite having some sweet moments is a bit too overdone as the last two Lego films have also had this type of relationship in thier narratives, making these films starting to form a noticeable pattern.

The other ninjas, aside from Jackie Chan's amusing take on Master Wu, also get a massive downgrade when compared to thier personalities in the show, with Zane the White Nin-droid (Zach Woods) and Kai the Red Ninja (Michael Pena) getting the worst treatment here. Although I understand that these aren't the same characters as the show, a lot more could have been done with them as characters.

However, despite these problems with the story and characters, the incredible stop-motion-like character animation provided by Animal Logic some heartwarming moments and the trademark humor of this franchise, including one joke that should not have been given away in the trailers, is what prevents The Lego Ninjago Movie from being a bad film. It's mostly OK, but both Warner Bros and The Lego Group need to reevaluate thier plans about the direction of future Lego spin-offs, if they want to prevent them from being disassembled beyond the point of rebuilding it from the ground up.