Great Film overall

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

LEGOs are a whole thing nowadays. Well, if I'm being honest, and I like to be honest, it's been a thing for quite a while now. There are annual conventions. There are subcultures devoted to building from a kit or building freeform fun or to particular collectible sets. It's a toy that's as attractive to adults as it is to kids, and it doesn't show signs of slowing down.Now, when I was growing up, there weren't very many LEGO sets. The space one was considered a Big Deal around my house. The LEGO guy had an astronaut helmet! And there were all kinds of pieces you could use to build a wacky spaceship, directions be darned. In fact, I don't remember ever following directions for a LEGO set. We'd just pick up pieces and see what happened. Nowadays, though, there are thousands of themed sets, from Harry Potter and Star Wars to the old classics like pirate ships or the aforementioned astronauts. And with the huge success of The LEGO Movie, The LEGO Batman Movie, and the LEGO Ninjago Movie, it's hard to see the product's popularly dwindling anytime soon.This documentary touches on everything LEGO, from its old-timey beginnings as an amusing pastime for the kiddies to the marketing behemoth it's become. We learn how LEGOs are used in a New Jersey school to help autistic children communicate. We learn that people have used LEGOs to make actual, usable, real life things like houses and cars. We learn that LEGO can even be used as an art medium. We learn, too, that the LEGO company itself evolved from being a typical create-from-within corporation to one that gladly welcomes the ideas and visions of its customers, even holding contests to get new ideas for LEGO products.This Brickumentary is a fine film. There are plenty of human-interest stories, as one might expect, and more than one will jerk at the ol' heart strings. And, as noted above, there are also several real-world applications on display. When's the last time you saw a toy being used by adults to produce practical results? Probably half past never! Sure, it's a huge commercial. There aren't many warts on display, no disfigured minifigs. But that's okay – the universal appeal of the toy made me happy to learn more about it. If you're looking for a tell-all, keep walking. But if not… this film fits like, uh, two interlocking bricks, or something.

A Lego Brickumentary (2014) *** (out of 4)Jason Bateman narrates this somewhat long-winded by highly informative documentary about the history of LEGOs and why everyone loves them so much. The documentary covers how the company got started, the early troubles with fire and then goes into detail about how the company evolved over the decades to become a global phenomenon. We get interviews with fans, master builders as well as people who have a dream job of creating new models. If you're a fan of LEGOs then you'll certainly love this film as it really does tell you everything you need to know about the company and its fans. The documentary does a very good job with the history but it also gives you a good idea of what they plan on doing in the future including how they got fans involved with what they come up with . We get to see some of the amazing large creations that superfans have come up with as well as some of the fan-made movies.

A Lego Brickumentary, also known as Beyond the Brick: A Lego Brickumentary is a very interestingly done documentary that looks at the global culture, appeal, and history of the Lego Company and its building block toys. The documentary borders on mockumentary at times, and it features some rather confusing scenes, but overall, it's worth a watch, especially if you're a huge fan of the popular brick company. The film shows the audience the origin of Legos through its country of origin, Denmark, to modern day. The film goes through both the accomplishments and struggles of the company, and how it almost went bankrupt around 1999. The film shows how the company changed with the times, as well as, footage of Lego conventions, and various fans using their Legos in very creative ways. Creative use of Legos included a person who built an entire house out of Lego bricks, and another person who built an actual car using Legos. Both examples are crazily creative. The movie even contains scenes showing how Legos are improving the world, with some psychiatrist using Legos to help their patients, and one boy, named Adrian Pitt, who is using Legos to help with his speech problem.The documentary is narrated by Jason Bateman, playing a fictional Lego, who appears sometimes in well-done stop-motion sequences and tells the audience about an aspect of Legos. What I appreciated about these particular sequences was the amount of creativity that went into them. It must have taken the filmmakers hours just to make one sequence. We even get to see some behind the scenes footage of the making of the recent The Lego Movie.The film contains interviews with various people who work at Lego, as well as, entertainers such as Ed Sheeran, Trey Parker, and Dwight Howard, all of whom relate their personal experiences and appreciation for Legos. These sequences are nice, as we get to see that Lego fans go well-beyond supposed children or even nerds.In spite of all of the praise I've given this film, I can't say it's perfect. One thing, a Brickumentary falls apart in, is it's a lack of focus. While all the various Lego stories are interesting, much of the material that happens at the actual Lego studios left me uninterested. Maybe I'm just not into the actual behind the scenes aspects of the company, but I did find the actual Lego creative stories more eventful, and thankfully, they do make up the bulk of the film.That major flaw aside, A Lego Brickumentary is a fairly well-made, well-done documentary that serves as a good look at the history and success of one of the world's biggest toy companies, who got popular simply off one product, and not many companies can say that.

Confession: I am documentary junkie. That said, this film was not exactly a work of art. It has the feeling of an IMAX or theme park film, but don't let that stop you.The story of Lego is reminiscent of many titans of business; big ideas growing out of a small shop, and so forth. What this movie is really about though is summed up in this statement: "99% of the smartest people in the world do not work for us." Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen explains as he recounts the near death experience of Lego in the early 2000's. Clearly Lego is *capitalizing on their success. As such, this movie shows how great of a company Lego is; and to be honest, Lego seems to deserving of all the attention it has been getting. But this "Brickumentary" is more than that. It is also a window into the immensely diverse world of Lego fanboys and girls, (think Bronys,Trekkies, et.al.), and lets us in to the way Lego utilizes "crowd-sourcing", something Lego appears to have been on the cutting edge of. It shows us how Lego has become a medium for the arts, a tool of scientific inquiry, and how little kids who started with a box of plastic bricks were later inspired to engineering things that have helped us in the real world. My family loved it. Looking forward to watching it again soon. (PS: my only complaint is that there is a split second or two of non-kid friendly content. Surely the filmmakers knew that their audience would predominantly be children. Some things are better left unsaid or in this case, un-shown...)