A LEGO Brickumentary Blu-ray Review

Watching A LEGO Brickumentary will activate uncontrollable urges to rush out and buy LEGO sets. Any LEGO sets. That’s the kind of impact the LEGO toy brand has had since its invention many decades ago, though most of A LEGO Brickumentary focuses on the impact the brand is having now after its popularity has already soared to new heights.

Figuring kids would be watching A LEGO Brickumentary and knowing kids are adverse to talking heads, directors Kief Davidson and Daniel Jung cleverly turned the historical aspects of this documentary into a whimsical tale narrated by a Jason Bateman-voiced spastic LEGO figure. It successfully will make kids laugh, though adults with a historical curiosity might find the glossing over of LEGO’s early years a missed opportunity.

Kids might not be able to resist the urge to build LEGO after the historical first act and will head off to build their latest wild idea. I suspect that was the intention as the rest of the documentary is nearly devoid of the slapstick humor Bateman brings early on.

Much of A LEGO Brickumentary spends time with artists, kids, scientists, architects, and other people from all walks of like whom have either made a career of building with LEGO or the colorful bricks have impacted their lives for the better. At times A LEGO Brickumentary feels like an expose on these people as opposed to going behind-the-scenes at the famous company. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as it would take many, many more hours to reach every corner of the LEGO universe.

To the filmmakers’ credit a small amount of time is chiseled out to explore the mid-to-late 1990s and early 2000s when LEGO was on the verge of going under. I knew loosely about this time beforehand so it was insightful to learn more about what went wrong and the steps that LEGO executives and leaders took to right the ship.

The benefit to watching A LEGO Brickumentary on Blu-ray is to see all the wonderful creations in 1080p high definition. Both the Blu-ray and DVD editions include a pair of bonus features; Promotional Reels for Legoland and LEGO Discovery Centers, and Deleted Scenes. What’s amazing about the deleted scenes is watching the builders profiled in them feels like watching part 2 of the documentary rather than random tossed scenes. I feel bad for the folks who were completely cut out from the main documentary, but at least they got to appear on the disc.

I personally would have focused on a few different areas of LEGO than A LEGO Brickumentary explores. More time spent in the past and profiling the themes versus people, for example. The documentary still successfully enlightened me on the world of LEGO and its cultural impact with information I did not previously know and increased my appetite to buy some more bricks. Mission accomplished.

A LEGO Brickumentary was released on November 3rd, 2015 and is currently available to purchase at Amazon.com.