Five years after defeating the evil Lord Business and ensuring imagination and innovation survived in their Lego-home, nice guy Emmet (Chris Pratt) and warrior Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) have been leading the fight for survival against the destructive Lego Duplo invaders. Written and produced by the original film's creators Phil Lord and Chris Miller, incoming director Mike Mitchell delivers another peppy, sardonic and amusing escapade that places pop culture front and centre, this time expanding into the apocalyptic and outerspace sub-genres. The tongue-in-cheek meta-humour is again layered to appeal to all ages, encompassing everything from slapstick gags and Dad-jokes to satirical social commentary and cinematic homages only adults would understand. It doubles down on its comically catchy-song gag with another ludicrously absurd toe-tapper (the aptly named 'Catchy Song') that'll undoubtedly find its way into every household with a young kid, although the superbly on-the-nose 'Not Evil' performed by Tiffany Haddish's Queen Watevra Wa'Nabi is the highlight. Where this sequel loses its edge compared to its predecessor is on two fronts: the Lego-building action and the narrative structure. And it's not just because the surprise factor is now missing. There are still car chases, explosions and gunfights on display, but the 'master building' inventiveness has decreased in favour of more standard action beats. The finale also breaks the film's own logic, which feels like a bit of a cheat. The plot twist in the first instalment is developed further here, with true-to-life parallels driving the Lego-verse story; however, the moral lessons have become even more unsubtle thanks to unnecessary flashes of the real world throughout the runtime. It finishes on a joyfully silly high though, the end credits rap commenting on, well, end credits. I'm guessing Chris Cunnington is the first stereoscopic supervisor to be mentioned in a song. Ever. Suffering from diminishing returns for sure, there's still more than enough laugh-out-loud humour and clever references to make The Lego Movie 2 a crowd-pleasing adventure.
