Legos and Pharrell Williams merge for the functional but surface-level Piece by Piece

This decade's theatrical cinema landscape is truly puzzling. Big-screen comedies are scarce. A trio of Pixar movies were sent to streaming with minimal fanfare. Yet just last night I sat in a jam-packed auditorium watching an animated documentary on the big screen. This ultra-specific animated documentary domain (which has existed since at least 1918) used to belong exclusively to the short film format. Then 2008's feature-length Waltz with Bashir increased this concept's notoriety. While not an exceedingly common cinematic form, the animated documentary movie has persisted and produced modern classics like Flee.

Now, the Waltz with Bashir and Flee form has been permutated into Piece by Piece. This feature chronicles the life of musician Pharrell Williams through the lens of Lego animation. This famous figure’s childhood, career highs and lows, and everything in between are told through computer-animated Lego figures and backdrops. It’s a bold visual scheme for a motion picture that also firmly qualifies as a musician biopic, one of the more tired cinematic molds out there.

Pharrell Lanscilo Williams was born in Virginia in April 1973. Though initially struggling with school and fitting in with others, he quickly found his passion for life: music. Put on a Stevie Wonder or Aretha Franklin record, young Pharrell would quickly get swept up in a world of vibrant noises and color. This adolescent passion led to his grandmother buying him a snare drum in middle school. This gift led to Pharrell starting his first band, The Neptunes, with childhood pal Chad Hugo.

From there, Piece by Piece’s central subject tried to break into a musical industry that kept throwing additional obstacles into his path. Eventually, though, all the distinctive beats and harmonies Pharrell conjured up caught people's attention. Among those entranced were famous artists and producers like N.O.R.E., Jay-Z, and Gwen Stefan. Popularity quickly wrapped up Pharrell. However, just like a delicately assembled Lego set, everything can come crashing down in the blink of an eye.

Piece by Piece firmly occupies the documentary realm, with reflective interviews with Pharrell and other pivotal figures in his life guiding the story. Director Morgan Neville even appears on-screen as a Lego minifigure talking to individuals like Kendrick Lamar. This makes him the first documentarian to get his own Lego minifigure (unless there’s a Barbara Kopple Lego set I missed). Typically, the computer-animated visuals on-screen are much more polished creations echoing the heightened imagery seen in the last four theatrical Lego movies. Grand visuals, like gigantic singing fish or an endless room where Pharrell keeps all his beats, occupy the big screen.

Occasionally, though, Piece by Piece employs cinema verité style imagery that’s instantly absorbing. An establishing shot of an older Pusha T, for example, sees a Lego version of the rapper bathed in naturalistic-looking sunlight. Pharrell’s climactic return to the apartment complex he grew up in includes a briefly-visible Lego boom operator. Two scenes showing Pharrell as a dutiful father in his home employ rockier handheld camerawork. There’s something immediately arresting about juxtaposing both polished Lego figures and a musician of Pharrell’s legendary status with such distinctly imperfect visual elements.

Screenwriters Neville, Jason Zeldes, Aaron Wickenden, and Oscar Vazquez's grandiose visual impulses aren’t bad. This is especially true when they lean on more impressionistic tendencies to reflect Pharrell’s passion for music. However, the more outlandish cutaways often alternate between unimaginative visual extensions of Pharrell’s emotions (like him being alone at sea when he’s emotionally distraught) or doing formulaic Universal Pictures cross-promotions for E.T. and James Whale’s Frankenstein. These polished and derivative elements betray the ramshackle observational tendencies of many great documentaries. Going full Surf’s Up and committing Piece by Piece’s visuals to being a computer-animated simulation of a documentary could’ve been truly remarkable.

Still, the final product’s animation is perfectly adequate on its own terms. It all certainly bursts with enough energy to keep its 94-minute runtime reasonably engaging. This production is a Pharrell Williams-approved retelling of his life and a Lego commercial. Those facts mean Piece by Piece can’t ever function as a truly insightful deep-dive into a musician’s life. However, Neville’s track record of pleasant but surface-level celebrity documentaries (save for 2018’s deeply moving Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) means few will be entering this project expecting something with the substance of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed. As a kid-friendly dive into a remarkable 21st-century musician, it’s perfectly cromulent, as a Simpsons character would say.

Much of the entertainment comes from the deeply entertaining anecdotes from the various musicians describing their experiences with Pharrell. No matter how many times one hears it, various rappers and producers consistently describing the "Happy" singer as "like a spunky little brother" never stops being amusing. Such infectious passion for Pharrell also vividly comes through in anecdotes from people like Lamar, Jay-Z, or N.O.R.E. Coating them in Lego minifigure paint can’t conceal their palpable enthusiasm for Piece by Piece’s central subject. They’re not just reading PR statements, these comments truly sound like they come from the heart. Especially amusing from these interview segments is Jay-Z recalling how he "demanded" to do a guest verse on Pharrell's hit single "Frontin'," since he immediately knew it would be a massive deal.

Another Piece by Piece virtue? The chance to hear some great songs in a big screen space. If you want a reminder that Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” is one of the greatest songs of the 21st century, then listen to it blare on movie theater speakers. This bevy of excellent tunes also nicely reinforces the profound impact Pharrell's had on modern music. He’s had so many fingers in a shocking amount of musical pies, from Britney Spears ditties to Snoop Dogg hits. The only major drawback of these toe-tapping needle drops is the cringe-inducing presence of “Blurred Lines.” Piece by Piece just nonchalantly playing that tune in the background without ever commenting on its troubling subtext, unfortunately, encapsulates the project’s softball approach with its central subject.

Once Piece by Piece ends, viewers won’t know significantly more about Pharrell Williams than they did at the start. Whereas Flee used animation to bring us closer to a real-life subject, Piece by Piece’s frantic Lego animation isn’t as rich with humanity. Still, the project’s more ambitious tendencies (like the most stylized visuals or rendering the Ferguson protests in Lego form) are commendable. Plus, hearing some especially lively interviews with iconic rappers and all-time great tunes elevates Piece by Piece slightly above a typical celebrity documentary. If nothing else, it’d be nice if Piece by Piece opened the door for more theatrically released animated documentaries. It’d only be fitting if the chaotic 2020s theatrical landscape was filled with entries in this once-obscure domain.