As someone who loves both LEGO and Pharrell Williams, it will come as no surprise that I really liked the animated biopic “Piece by Piece“. Pharrell has had a hand in most of the mainstream pop I like from the last 20+ years. I like most of his own work, with one big exception; I really, really can’t stand his massive 2013 hit “Happy“; it makes my skin crawl. But otherwise, he seems like a really nice and cool guy. Certain people seem to have no age; David Bowie comes to mind, and Pharrell is in the same category. He was born in 1973, but listening to him speak and sing, he could be 32 for all I know. And making an autobiography as a $16 million LEGO animated feature film is a crazy idea. But it totally works. They shot all the celebrity interviews the traditional way and then animated the LEGO characters to the soundtrack (great fun to see Snoop Dogg, Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes and many others as LEGO minifigs).
And speaking about the movie with Rick Rubin, Pharrell says something interesting here: “I needed to see myself objectified first to write about myself.” So basically, he had to watch himself as a LEGO minifigure before he could create a song about his own life (the catchy ‘Piece by Piece‘ theme song from the movie).
Here’s the trailer; needless to say, if you are not into Pharrell, it will be a fairly boring movie, even if it is visually quite interesting and some of the jokes are good. One fun aspect is that Pharrell has synesthesia, meaning that he sees music and beats visually in his mind. This is brilliantly done with little LEGO builds in the movie, would have been hard to pull off in a more traditional documentary. Oh, and of course there is an official Pharrell LEGO Spaceship set you can get.
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