“Everything is awesome!”
-Everyone, all the time
The Set Up
We wanted to have a bit of fun with our end-of-the-year post, so this year we decided to watch The Lego Movie and treat ourselves to the Lego sets we could never afford as kids. We were all fortunate enough to play with Lego as kids, but we didn’t have the ability to ball out in the Lego aisle quite as hard as we wanted to. Now, we all have full-time jobs and are able to drop some serious cash on the larger Lego sets, so we each bought our personal dream Lego set as an early Christmas present to ourselves.
It was wonderful to feel that childlike wonder on Christmas day, the unbridled joy of tearing into the wrapping paper to be greeted with a brightly colored box with various sized and colored plastic rectangular prisms rustling against each other. The distinctive sound of the Lego plastic bags that you carefully tear open so as to not lose one of the smaller pieces in the set. The satisfying moment as you join two different pieces together that lock to each other much like our young child eyes would upon the larger sets in the aisle. Pure bliss.
Ben got a detective office from the Creator Lego line, which came with many surprises, like a buried barrel of cookies and a secret crawlspace into the neighboring bar. Seriously though, if anyone knows someone at Lego who worked on this set by some random coincidence, please solve the barrel of cookies mystery for us. We’re very curious. Very.
Leanna decided to go for the pet shop. No one was surprised, but we think Tengo was a little jealous.
André got an X-Wing complete with wings that open and close. He could have gotten an architectural piece like everyone else did, but he found himself drawn irresistibly to the X-Wing, kind of like Luke Skywalker. It’s a good thing to be like Luke.
While we built our sets, we celebrated them like any self-respecting child would, with a Lego themed meal. We wanted to indulge ourselves with a Munch post that would make us all feel young at heart (not that we are that old or anything).
The Meal
We skipped the appetizer and went straight to the pizza because when you were a kid, did you eat a salad before you ate the pizza at a pizza party? No. You dug right into that pizza and you ate it until you could eat no more. A green appetizer wouldn’t even cross your mind.
Obviously we had to do pepperoni because A) you can guarantee that there is at least one pepperoni pizza at any kid’s pizza party and B) you can arrange the pepperoni slices to make the pizza looks like Lego bricks. With a little bit of cornmeal on the crust, these pizzas were incredibly satisfying and had us going back for seconds.
For dessert, we made a vanilla Lego cake. What is a Lego cake, you ask? It is a vanilla cake covered in buttercream frosting and shaped to look like a Lego. That’s all.
The Drinks
The pizza parties of our childhoods that we were trying to recreate were almost always accompanied by a 2-liter bottle of soda, but the “cool” moms would take that soda and step it up a notch by also providing a 2 liter bottle of cranberry juice to make a virgin cranberry-Sprite punch. We made a decidedly un-virgin cranberry-sprite punch. Is un-virgin a word? Maybe a deflowered cranberry-sprite punch? No that doesn’t sound right… What we’re trying to say is we put vodka in it.
The Rules*
- Drink when someone says “Mr. Business.”
- Drink when you see an artifact of the real world.
- Finish your drink when “Everything is Awesome” plays.
*A preemptive courtesy note before we get a call from our lawyer: You may or may not actually want to follow these rules. We created the rules around what happens a lot in this movie, and as a result, they may be dangerous to your health to actually follow 100%. We guess it depends on how hard you rock and how committed to the Munch drinking rules you are. You’ve been warned.
The Movie
To be honest, we kind of had the movie playing in the background because we were all very focused on our Lego sets. However, we did all enjoy the movie, even if it didn’t get our full attention. The voice acting is excellent, the animation is great, and the plot contained enough surprises and unexpected reveals to make it a fun movie to watch.
All the actors who lent their voices to this movie did a great job. Some of our favorite Wills were in this movie, including Ferrell, Arnett, and Forte, and there were great performances by Chris Pratt, Morgan Freeman, and Alison Brie as well. They all came together to create a strong ensemble, which is staggering considering the quantity of the characters and the roles they play.
One of our favorite parts of The Lego Movie is the dedication to the Lego craft and the world they were presented in. You could almost believe the whole movie was top-notch stop motion or something. Really impressive stuff that now seems so essential to the movie.
We would be remiss to not mention the huge twist in the film that is equal parts endearing and really sets the film apart from the pack. There we mentioned it.
Overall, The Lego Movie was a great choice for a background movie to play while building Lego sets, but also stands up as a great movie on its own as well.
The Reviews
Andre: Fun for ages 9 – 99. Lego, man. It never gets old. I had a great time walking through the store, building my X-Wing, and watching the Lego Movie. Out of those three activities, though, building the set was the best. I love the way the pieces feel when they snap together, or the way you feel when you finally realize what piece it is you’ve been building for the last 23 steps. It helps that the sets look great once they are done. Right now, my X-Wing is on display on my bookcase and it probably won’t come down for a while.
Leanna: Everything is awesome. I’m so glad this movie exists and inspired us to indulge our nostalgia and spend too much money at the Lego store. The day we dedicated to this post was a treat: working on a Lego set with tiny animals in it, spending quality time reminiscing with two of my favorite people, watching a movie that continues to make me laugh, and, of course, eating a delicious meal. My favorite part of the movie is hearing a familiar voice and trying to guess who it is before checking IMDB – I was pleasantly surprised more than once by the range of actors and actresses they got for this film. 10/10 would watch again (probably while building the next building in the Creator set to accompany my completed pet shop).
Ben: 90%. A satisfyingly good movie that on paper should have not been as good as it was. I remember seeing the preview for The Lego Movie before the film came out and was equal parts surprised, annoyed, and saddened that they were creating a movie around the Lego property. But they completely blew me away with how dedicated they were to Lego as the toy, and all of the sets that they have created. Unfortunately, for as gender-neutral Lego is/can be, this film is pretty dominated with male characters. I think there are two women worth mentioning. Yeah. Ultimately, The Lego Movie is a wonderful film for all ages in that it is impressive that it pulled off the feat of converting a plastic toy with little character into a wonderful movie.
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