'Piece By Piece' Review: Pharrell's LEGO Bio Doc Kinda Clicks
Despicable Me was one of two movie soundtracks that shaped my taste in music, the other being Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Pharrell Williams produced the latter. The man has a blood oath with those Minions to record a new track for all mainline installments. But back then, I was hooked on Williams' infectious rhythms and rhymes. We're talking about knowing every song from that first film’s album by heart and then when Despicable Me 2 came out, I learned every one of those too. I even performed “Happy” at my high school talent show as the closing number. Whenever Williams was tied to a film soundtrack, I treated that album drop like a Beyonce or Taylor Swift event. Despicable Me, Dope, Hidden Figures, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, that time N.E.R.D. reunited for The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water. Peak Pharrell across the board. So it made sense when Universal announced that they’d use their new LEGO film rights to make a Pharrell documentary. As an artist with major career ambitions, he should have his origin story told through the block toy property. If only there were more dimensions to his CG brick character.
Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features / © 2024 FOCUS FEATURES LLC
PG: Language, some suggestive material, and thematic elements
Runtime: 1 Hr and 33 Min
Production Companies: The Lego Group, Tremolo Productions, I Am Other
Distributor: Focus Features
Director: Morgan Neville
Writers: Morgan Neville, Oscar Vazquez, Aaron Wickenden, Jason Zeldes
Cast: Pharrell Williams, Morgan Neville, Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg
Release Date: October 11, 2024
Told through a detailed interview with Morgan Neville, Pharrell chronicles his rising music production career as a kid from Virginia who went to school with Pusha T, Timbaland, and Missy Elliot. During his early days, he and his best friend Chad Hugo formed a duo called The Neptunes, working under Teddy Riley’s record company in the ‘90s to eventually making it on their own, working alongside Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, and bringing their pal Pusha T up with them. Told through LEGO bricks, Piece by Piece illuminates the artistry Pharrell Williams contributed to music throughout the decades and the myriad of emotions stirred by his tunes.
Piece by Piece is like letting a kid with a vivid imagination and an affinity for Pharrell’s works tell his story with LEGO bricks. And that kid somehow got the go-ahead to share it with the world. Even though that's not the case, since adults made this movie, it has a childlike creativity that gives this specific approach some weight.
Piece by Piece is told through a series of auditory interviews curated by Morgan Neville and subsequently crafted in a stylistic animated art style. There’s passion in its visuals and vivid illustrative techniques, rendering it as a tool and device rather than a gimmick. Music bio-docs and narrative biopics are too stale – a sentiment that probably got this production greenlit. The animation team at Pure Imagination Studios, which has worked on other LEGO-related projects, most notably The Simpsons’ “Brick Like Me” episode, delivers a spectacle under the supervision of animation director Howard Baker. They take full advantage of this to make Pharrell's story feel cinematic and vivid.
The animators take bold steps with the format, such as personifying beats and rhythms as abstract geometrical shapes to convey how music connects us. Every person, object, background, resource, etc. is in LEGO and while this is not the same visual style as the Animal Logic-made LEGO movies made for Warner Bros., it still bursts with an enchanting flair and grounded style.
The film is at its finest when the animation utilizes humorous imagery and gags that sidestep across familiar music doc plotting, advancing the story while offering a new take appropriate for kids. Granted, the use of the word “shit” in a LEGO project, recreations of suggestive music videos, and weed smoke in the guise of a PG spray took me out, but it made me respect it even more. How did this movie get away with a PG rating? Welcome back, ‘80s family films.
Piece by Piece captures a nostalgic atmosphere that transports you back to the early 2000s and the music culture surrounding it, outside of the numerous cameos from musicians who topped the charts back then. Either way, if I were a middle school music teacher, this would be the perfect film to put on for the class to teach them about 2000s music and hip-hop.
While Williams is the film’s center point, it nicely tributes and gives The Neptunes’ co-head Chad Hugo his flowers, painting him in a loving light. While the duo isn’t on speaking terms (a topic that the film refused to touch on), there is no ill will towards him. Hell, it makes him seem like a cooler vibe to hang out with than Pharrell.
I won’t sugarcoat it: Piece by Piece is a major vanity project. It has bits of wisdom and insight about the obstacles Williams faced throughout his career but it's painted with the broadest strokes to ensure his image is sanctified. Much like the animation direction's vivid style is used to skirt past music tropes, it also drifts by any opportunity to substantially point out Pharrell's flaws in detail. He has the keys to mythologizing his background, but often walks around eggshells and distracts you by highlighting his great music. If you're wondering about the fallout he and Hugo had or how N.E.R.D. broke up, the movie won’t tell you because that would put Williams in a “less holy than thou” light. And we can't have Pharrell looking smaller than the minifigure he's animated as.
The more that Piece By Piece bypasses its potential for substance, the wackier the pacing becomes. It’s adamantly more concerned about chronicling the known aspects of Williams' recent career but fails to connect between one song he produced and the next. No other movie will have a more jarring jump in tone than Piece by Piece's transition between the impact “Happy” had and the Black Lives Matter protests, subsequently highlighting Kendrick Lamar's “Alright”. I never thought I'd see the day that protest footage is animated in LEGO as Black bricks shout, "Don't shoot!" As strange as it sounds, and as far as context goes, I shudder while thinking about it.
Despite surface-level storytelling from its source subject, the Pharrell-centered Piece by Piece is a beautifully animated music documentary that exhibits a bridge between music, community, and culture pieced with love.
Rating: 3/5
