Sep 5, 2024

First impressions of Pharrell Williams' Lego biopic “Piece By Piece” are mixed.

“Piece by Piece,” an unconventional new CG-animated documentary film directed by Morgan Neville, premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last week, and critics' first impressions have arrived.

Scheduled for release on October 11, the film is a Pharrell Williams biopic produced in the Lego style. Focus Features, a subsidiary of Universal Pictures, will distribute the film.

The general critical consensus is that the film, while conceptually original and fun, is a shallow biography that struggles to tell its story with Lego bricks.

Maureen Lee Lenker gave the film a B- in Entertainment Weekly, emphasizing the “freshness of the talking head documentary” but also criticizing its flaws:

Memories of the past and Farrell's childhood fantasies are whimsically and passionately acted. On the other hand, other segments would have been better served with archival footage. I would not want to see a Lego version of No Doubt or Justin Timberlake recording a hit song with Pharrell. Also, it would be really weird to see a Lego recreation of something like Pharrell's interview with Oprah, instead of watching a clip of the interview itself. [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] [...] Williams and Neville took it apart and restored it to perfection.

In rebuttal, Robert Daniels of RogerEbert.com offered a negative review, questioning who the film was made for:

Instead, “Piece by Piece” is overstretched and underdeveloped. The musical scenes lack originality, the Lego animation fails to rise above its expected luster, the biopic elements are too restrained, and the humor is intermittent. The humor is also intermittent: who on earth is this film for? One also wonders how many adults will be attracted to a film that, by its animated nature, tries to straddle the line between wink and clean. There are simply too many things missing from “Piece by Piece” to make it as memorable as its subject matter.