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Friday, May 24, 2019

The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017)


The Lego Ninjago Movie is the third in The Lego Movie series (although the franchise already had a few animated shorts and features before this point), it carries the same quirkiness and mixture of real-life characters into its plot.  This time, it takes on the form of a child going into an old relic shop, where the shop owner tells the story of the Ninjago.  Ninjago is a Lego city, and Garmadon is a serial villain who keeps trying to take over the city but is always thwarted by the five members of the secret ninja force, and their master, Wu.  The viewpoint is mainly from Lloyd, whom we are told right at the beginning is Garmadon's son.  There is a heavy emphasis on the lack of a proper father-son relationship, stealing the focus of many scenes.  The movie tries to get wackier than the previous two installments but it comes off as just trying too hard.  The reuse of certain scenes and gags (two separate clips that each occurred twice easily comes to mind) makes it feel forced and as if they are needing to pad out the runtime as they are running out of budget.  The story itself is quite simple, being just fighting the villain and then traveling in order to get abilities to fight the villain again.  Despite that, it's quite enjoyable and there are still plenty of gags that works but is starting to show fatigue.
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