Pharrell Williams stars in director Morgan Neville’s Piece by Piece, a documentary that uses Lego to tell the life of the musical performer.Courtesy of Focus Features/Focus Features
Film Name: Piece By Piece
Directed by: Morgan Neville
Written by: Morgan Neville
Starring: Pharrell Williams, Chad Hugo, Pusha T, Timbaland, Missy Elliott
Classification PG; 93 minutes
A Lego documentary on Pharrell Williams?! Twenty seconds into the trailer, you understand why the idea makes total sense. As his hit song Happy plays in the background, you hear Williams tell his story: about how he always felt different, how even as a child people thought he was odd. It’s perfect popcorn fare: the story of a creative genius against the playfulness of a Lego landscape mixed with a boppy tune.
For people well aware of Williams’s personal history, Piece By Piece doesn’t offer much new information. We get to hear about his upbringing in the projects of the resort city Virginia Beach, where he met musical friends in school who would eventually go on to become partners and collaborators. There was fellow music nerd Chad Hugo, with whom he co-founded record production duo the Neptunes, along with emerging voices such as Timbaland, Missy Elliott and Pusha T. Record producer and new jack swing pioneer Teddy Riley, who gave him a break. And artists such as Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg, who sought him out.
All these artists know how to spin a beat and a yarn. Feature them with their own chart-topping numbers in the background and the documentary feels like a party in the theatre. Using Lego as a medium adds an element of trippiness, especially when Williams talks about having synesthesia and seeing music as colours, or muses out loud about mental escapades into underwater or outer space realms.
Pharrell Williams and Gwen Stefani appear as Lego characters in a scene from Piece by Piece.Courtesy of Focus Features/Focus Features
While the documentary is wondrously inventive in more than a few scenes, it doesn’t go too much outside this Lego box of a celebrity profile. There is a degree of introspection by Williams about the limitations of success and hubris, Busta Rhymes articulates the struggles between the artist and management, as well as a brief interlude of how Williams reckoned with the Black Lives Matters movement. But the creative differences between Williams and Hugo, for example, are bricked over.
So is Piece By Piece a true documentary? Or is it yet another smart venture by a prolific artist – especially now that there’s an Over The Moon Lego set created in collaboration with Williams available for purchase? The answer is somewhere in between. But you clap along anyway because sometimes happiness is the truth.
In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)