The LEGO Ninjago Movie Review

"The LEGO Movie" in 2014 was a movie that a lot of people were really nervous about. I mean, a movie about LEGOs? What can you do with that to make it interesting? Turns out with the right creative team you can make anything work. Phil Lord and Chris Miller were definitely the right two people for the job as "The LEGO Movie" was absolutely genius and one of my favorites of 2014. And on record, I wasn't among the crowd dreading it. I saw those trailers and I was sold. But apparently I'm in the minority, which is OK. I ended up being right with my premonitions. That aside, the success of "The LEGO Movie" opened up a whole new door for Warner Bros. Animation with a whole slew of different LEGO Movie options that they could do and they decided to start things off brilliantly with "The LEGO Batman Movie" earlier this year. Not only was Will Arnett's Batman one of the funniest parts of "The LEGO Movie," but there have been so many iterations of Batman over the years that doing a LEGO spoof movie on the character was absolutely genius. While I loved "The LEGO Movie" more, "The LEGO Batman Movie" wasn't too far behind in quality. And now we have the third movie in the LEGO series in... "The LEGO Ninjago Movie"? In Warner Bros. we trust?

With the success of "The LEGO Movie" and "The LEGO Batman Movie," it didn't take too much convincing for me to be excited about "Ninjago." Ninjas are cool, I guess. I like the cast in the movie. And the trailers were fun. So why not? Let's just trust in Warner Bros. and jump right in! The problem here for me was that "The LEGO Movie" was made for people who love LEGOs and "The LEGO Batman Movie" was made for people who love Batman. I am definitely deep into both those crowds. "Ninjago" was a completely unknown entity for me. Since the announcement and trailers for "Ninjago," I learned there's a popular kids TV show called "Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu" that aired its seventh season earlier this year that has also sparked (or perhaps vice-versa?) a whole brand of Ninjago LEGO sets that are some of LEGO's most popular sets. So I suppose it makes sense. But who's the audience here? How are they going to make this movie appeal to adults and kids this time around when most adults probably aren't super aware of "Ninjago" unless they have kids who love the series and the LEGO sets? Or have they decided to just ignore the adult crowd this time around and make a LEGO Movie specifically for the kids?

The answer to that latter question is definitely the latter answer. "The LEGO Ninjago Movie" is a movie solely for kids. Adults expecting the quality and depth of the first two movies are going to be sorely disappointed as we instead have a movie that is about on par with a straight-to-DVD LEGO movie. And remember the creative team that I referenced earlier that was key to making "The LEGO Movie" work? That might be our biggest problem here. We don't have Lord and Miller on this project like we did with the original. We don't even have someone like Chris McKay, who, prior to directing "The LEGO Batman Movie," worked a lot as director and producer of "Robot Chicken." With "The LEGO Ninjago Movie," we have a trio of directors who have primarily worked in the art department on various animated projects. Charlie Bean is the most experienced in the director's chair, having directed eight episodes of "TRON: Uprising" and 17 episodes of "Robotboy," while Paul Fisher and Bob Logan are stepping into the director's chair for the very first time, TV or film. And the team of writers is a rather large one, seemingly led again by Fisher and Logan, who have no screenwriting experience either. Too many cooks in the kitchen? And none with enough experience?

With that in mind, it makes perfect sense as to why this story is just a mess. And even though I know nothing about "Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu," I got the premonitions after watching this that the movie had absolutely nothing to do with the TV show. After reading a brief few things from a few people, I think my premonitions might be right and thus it's possible that your kids who love that show might walk away a bit confused as to what in the heck they just watched and why it has nothing to do with their TV show outside outside character names and character designs. That's all I'll say about that, given my limited knowledge of the show. Just a potential fair warning there. What we do have is a story that you can predict from the second you watch the trailers and a movie that thinks it's as smart as "The LEGO Movie" but really just had me bewildered as to how off it was. Kinda like the young 10-year-old kid who is confidently trying to sound as smart as his older brother, but is really just pulling at straws with no one wanting to be brave enough to tell him that all the knowledge he's spouting off is completely wrong. That's how "Ninjago" felt to me. The confident, yet clueless little brother to "The LEGO Movie." Thus I walked out of the theater really disappointed.

As far as specifics go, I do feel the need to talk about two plot points. Both were featured highly in the trailers and neither are actually spoilers. However, if you've read enough from this review and/or you haven't seen the trailers, you don't have to proceed if you don't want me talking about plot points. If you don't mind, then allow me to continue. Our main story arc in this movie follows a young teenage kid named Lloyd, whose secret identity is one of the Ninjas protecting the city. His father is the evil Lord Garmadon who daily attacks the city. Getting Luke/Darth Vader vibes just by me saying that? Yeah, we'll get to that. The other major plot point is that of a cat attacking the city. That I actually thought was a spoiler, thus I wasn't going to mention it in this review. But as it turns out, the whole father/son thing is more of a spoiler than the cat. Yes, it's a giant, live action cat that has seemingly jumped onto the LEGO set and started to play with the buildings, not helped by the fact that Lord Gardadon has a laser pointer that the cat loves playing with. Yeah, this is kind of a funny gag that had me laughing. However, I thought that this cat duel was going to be the final boss fight for our ninjas. No. The cat shows up at the beginning and is the main conflict throughout the movie.

So yeah, the funniest gag in the movie is one that is way overplayed. The cat showing up for 5-10 minutes at the end and destroying their city could've made for a funny finale. But he kinda wore out his welcome by being there for the whole movie. Then we have our father/son thing. And I really am curious to know how this writers meeting worked out for this. Someone honestly suggested that the evil overlord of the city was the father of the main character, as if this would be a clever, unique story to follow that would win over audiences. As if no one watching has ever heard of this thing called "STAR WARS"!!!! Had they done something fun or unique with that story arc, then fine. But I swear they wrote this movie as a huge ninja parody of "Star Wars," hoping that no one would figure it out if they followed nearly the same exact structure. Or maybe they wrote this thinking that their target audience of young kids either wouldn't care or wouldn't notice. Which is totally fine if it pleases them. But I am a little frustrated that they chose to completely ignore the adult crowd that turned out in droves for their last two LEGO movies. I was waiting for something unique or clever with this story. Instead it's exactly what you think it's going to be.

I suppose there's enough fun to be had in this movie that it's a passable film, especially for younger kids that are dying to see another new movie since it's been a couple months. In comparing this movie to the likes of "Cars 3" or "Despicable Me 3," I was certainly a lot less frustrated this time around. I didn't hate life and I wasn't completely bored to tears. The cat stuff is fun for a while and the adventures that the group of ninjas go on, led by Jackie Chan's Master Wu as their teacher, were decent. There were a few fun LEGO ninja fights. But the movie was also trying way too hard to be as clever as "The LEGO Movie" instead of doing its own thing. Lloyd was too much like Emmet. Lord Garmadon was too much like Lord Business. The message was fine and you got a few feel goods, but it also mirrored "The LEGO Movie" quite a bit. There was even a live action element to the movie that starts this film off and feels completely forced and unnecessary this time around. If your kids were looking forward to this movie, you should take them if you have the time and money because they'll probably enjoy it. But if you can convince them to wait until the DVD release, that might be best. My grade for "The LEGO Ninjago Movie" is a 7/10 and even that feels a bit too nice.