Piece by Piece

Pharrell Williams has decided to tell us a story of his life thus far using Lego as the creative conduit. The Lego bit is quite impressive and creative, the rest of it is really neither here nor there. Perhaps that's because he is just too young to present us with a compendium of his achievments. The boy from Virginia Beach lucking out when a big noise producer spots his band "The Neptunes" and gives them a chance, his persistence to get noticed, the undulation of his fame, his struggles with success and failure, friendships and family. His increasingly pivotal position in African American culture is all laid out like a yellow brick road, bumps and all, but none of it is particularity interesting. It isn't that different from the story that could be told by almost anyone trying to make it in the entertainment industry - actors, singers, musicians. There are the occasional graphics to tell us who is who, but the lego-fication of the animation sometimes makes it quite difficult to tell the characters apart and it does rely on quite a bit of knowledge of the man's career and of hip-hop to take much from it. It also doesn't really let us appreciate the music. Not that it needed to be a portmanteau of music videos, but the very thing that made and makes him relevant to so many hardly features at all. It's an imaginative production to look at, but the substance is lacking on just about every front.