The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019)

“Everything can still be awesome!”

Yeah, I’m not exactly going to give this film a slapping. Let’s say right now that I loved the first film and that this is pretty much 140 extra minutes of the same stuff and the same quality. Basically, it’s a bit good. Oh, and Merry Christmas and all that. This feels a suitable film for today.

Anyway, we start with the Duplo invasion from last film’s cliffhanger (I love the toddler voices!) leading five years later to everything having gone a bit Mad Max except, of course, for Emmett, who is his old self. There follows a clever and very meta plot which partly represents a bit of sibling rivalry in another dimension and partly shows us how uncool it is to be overly grimdark and antiheroic. It’s a nice moral, although I’m not sure I approve of the revelation towards the end that cutesy chart pop is not evil: I think you’ll find it’s evil incarnate. It’s not rock ‘n’ roll that’s the Devil’s music, it’s manufactured pop.

Throughout all this we get far too many self-referential and metatextual moments to recount, but the best by far is Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi doing her song about how she’s Totally Not Evil. Plus we get sooo many pop culture references and more taking the piss out of Green Lantern. This is always a good thing. And Will Arnett is scarily close to being my fave Batman. Plus we get grim, dinosaur loving future Emmett with his timey-wimeyness and stubble.

Another superb film. Unbelievable, super cool, outrageous and amazing.

The Happytime Murders (2018)

“I never knocked a guy out with his own balls before..."

Well then. I doubt, somehow, that that puppet sex scene will ever be topped. Team America has nothing on this. It's not all about puppet spunk going everywhere, though; this film is a work of bloody genius and you'd have to be proper po-faced not to enjoy it.

The concept is, of course, quite mad; in an LA where puppets exist as second class citizens, the cast of an '80 puppet television show are being murdered one by one. Meanwhile a puppet PI who is basically Philip Marlowe made of felt and voiced (literally) by the Swedish Chef, complete with first person narration, deals with the fallout from, er, falling out with his delightfully foul-mouthed former police partner Connie Edwards, the splendid Melissa McCartney.

It's even better than that, though; the script is hilarious, putting these Sesame Street style puppets in a world with lots of sex, swearing and, er, sugar. There's a rather decent whodunit going on but, even better than that, the firm is full of filthy dialogue. Delightfully filthy dialogue. And the not-particularly-famous cast plays it all perfectly.

If I were to pick holes, perhaps the ending is a little neat- yes, the baddie is defeated but it's not entirely clear how Phil comes to be exonerated. But I think it would be churlish to dwell on that too much; this film is hilarious, and didn't deserve to flop the way it did. Here's hoping for a deservedly long and glorious afterlife as a cult hit.

The Lego Movie (2014)

"Wiping your bum with a hook for a hand is really hard.."

This is the perfect Lego movie. Not only does the all-Lego animation look great (even the water in Emmett's shower is Lego!) but the message is perfect and splendidly anti-conformist: don't just follow the instructions- build whatever the hell you like. But preferably spaceships.

This being a Warner Bros films we get cameos from Star Wars characters (the Millennium Falcon gets gobbled up by that asteroid beast from The Empire Strikes Back) and DC characters are available for a bit of mickey taking, especially Green Lantern whose film recently flopped.

The baddie, President Business, as well as being improperly linked to business for a politician (ooh, but of politics there), has a secret agenda to glue everyone together as per the instructions for all eternity, a fate worse than death. Against him are a random assortment of "master builders" including Batman(!), a very sensible spaceman who wants to build spaceships, quite sensibly, and whose family has the crack at the bottom that Lego spacemen always have.

There's also Vetruvius, half Gandalf and half Obi Wan Kenovi who, in the funniest scene, comes back as a ghost for some very serious advice for Emmett and then flies away with a "woo-oo"!

I loved this film, and I don't even like Will Ferrell. It's probably my favourite animated movie of recent years and definitely a must-see.