Following its world premiere at Telluride and international premiere at Toronto International Film Festival, Piece By Piece is ready to bring its synesthetic vision to U.S. theaters through Focus Features. Opening Friday, October 11, this innovative documentary from Academy Award-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom) takes viewers through the life and career of music visionary Pharrell Williams with a LEGO animation twist.
Featuring appearances from Pharrell contemporaries like Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar and Gwen Stefani, Piece By Piece has been clicking with film critics overall. The pic has an 84% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes (from 51 critics’ reviews) and 63 on MetaCritic (19 critics’ reviews), with positive endorsements for its unique visuals and entertaining tales of the music biz from its star-powered talking heads. However, critics found the family-friendly animated take did not delve far beneath LEGO Pharrell’s CG-rendered plastic surface. The verdict: As beautiful and amusing 90 minutes, Piece By Piece is a positive-vibes overview of Pharrell’s inspiring creative journey.
Here’s what some of the critics are saying:
“While infinitely more difficult to produce, the LEGO strategy can feel like a cheat at times — an indulgence that underscores the vanity aspect of the project. As producer and subject, Williams wants to be seen this way. Granted, the magic-hour-all-the-time ‘footage’ looks terrific … Williams clearly sensed the unique way that animation can amplify certain emotions, illustrating abstract ideas with pop-art visuals. He first dabbled in the medium with Despicable Me, for which he wrote the music. Now, in what amounts to the ultimate LEGO trip, he sees both toons and the versatile building-block toys as a metaphor for infinite creativity.”
— Peter Debruge, Variety
“It can be challenging to represent creation in a documentary, but here Neville, with the help of editors Jason Zeldes, Aaron Wickenden and Oscar Vazquez, offers dynamic sequences that offer glimpses of how Williams’ mind works. The way Williams talks about matching beats to specific artists or finding just the right sound to round out a record affirms his genius. Beats become objects with lives of their own, meticulously catalogued and cared for by the artist. Inspiration for songs can come from anywhere, including the sound of a spray paint can. (It’s worth noting that Williams has five original songs in the doc, which complement Michael Andrews’ fanciful score.)”
— Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter
“Just listening to Pharrell’s music – which often mashes together odd elements from hip-hop, hard rock and disco – you picture a kid who would put incongruent pieces from the Vincent Van Gogh and Star Wars LEGO sets together to create a magically vibrant world of his own. We’re in that world in Piece By Piece, a hilarious, propulsive and disarmingly joyous ride … The animated pizazz only works because Pharrell and the titans recruited as talking heads (we hear from Missy Elliott, Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z and Pusha T, for starters) are natural orators with terrific origin stories to tell.”
— Radheyan Simonpillai, The Guardian
“Piece By Piece is designed with children in mind. It’s a laid back storybook, with inspirational moments and surprisingly muted drama … [The movie] doesn’t hit you like a ton of bricks. It’s mild-mannered with good intentions and amusing sight gags. But it’s that fact — its very existence as a musical biography that just wants the audience to be comforted and inspired — which makes it special. Morgan Neville may have made the latest in a long line of giant LEGO commercials, but he’s made one with real human decency and soul.”
— William Bibbiani, The Wrap
“At first, it’s a delight to see the likes of Pharrell, Neville, Jay-Z, and Gwen Stefani rendered as LEGO figures. It gives Williams’ biography a playful, vibrant lens. (Let me tell you, I never knew I needed LEGO Snoop Dogg in my life until this film.) But after the novelty wears off, the plasticine nature of the LEGO bricks reveal their limitations … The concept becomes completely tonally dissonant in the documentary’s more emotional moments — it’s hard to feel pathos for Williams’s monumental loss of his grandmother when you’re watching a LEGO figure fall to its knees in front of a LEGO doctor.”
— Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly
“Told entirely through the unique framing device of LEGOs, Williams’ life story makes an effective case for the American Dream … Piece By Piece is ultimately surface-level entertainment, a light, visually-inventive ride without much to offer its audiences beyond a reaffirmation on the values of hard work and believing in one’s self. This ‘magical thinking’ might hold the possibility to inspire its younger target audience, but a more substantive version for the adults in the room is left unconstructed.”
— Caleb Hammond, IndieWire
