Review of The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017) by Matt G — 21 Sep 2017

When the ill-advised-yet-shockingly-awesome Lego Movie came out in 2014, it was expected to be an insipid toy-commercial with little actual filmic value. Thankfully, we were wrong, and even got a Batman follow-up that was nearly as fun and smart. Now, with Ninjago, we've finally gotten the needlessly obnoxious Lego outing we always expected. Neither as clever nor as fun as its predecessors, the childlike innovation of the franchise, and its commitment to authentic Lego brick usage, has largely taken a backseat to mediocre parody and generic morality.

In it, a Power-Rangers-esque group of secret-teenage-ninjas-in-giant-mech-suits regularly has to fight off Batman / President Awesome rip-off Garmodon from conquering their city. As a disaster-heavy, giant robot film with cool effects, it's slightly better than Transformers because it doesn't take itself so seriously. Otherwise, it's fairly similar: indecipherable kaiju action, needlessly elaborate lore, and top-to-bottom weak characters. With 13 different credited writers and 3 directors, as a whole, Ninjago contains no interesting point-of-view, made with the uniqueness and clarity of a money-focused committee. However, it certainly has individual moments that work: the cat attack, the amputated arm, the list of fake ninja movies, the teen-robot, Kumail Najiani.

Ninjago is essentially a spoof film, and its positives are largely humor-based. However, where the best spoofs are satirical, somewhat purposeful and reverent to their sources, the worst ones just come off as cynical and lazy. Unfortunately, Ninjago leans much more towards the latter, removing a Lego-brick from the quality instead of adding to it. It's not the worst kids movie of 2017, but in this absurd reality in which we live, I can firmly say it's the worst Lego movie of 2017.