THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART

THE LEGO MOVIE 2 is a delightful, visually inventive, wonderfully funny movie that kept me thoroughly entertained. I have no idea whether kids would find it as funny as so much of the humour was knowing and seemed aimed at adults with a familiarity with the latest MAD MAX film, for example.

The film picks up where the original movie left off. The conceit is the same.  We have a framing device of a kid playing with lego. The adventures he acts out become represented in animated form in the lego world.  As the first movie ends, the kid sister shows up with her giant duplo bricks - a threat to his intricately built lego world. This sets up the conflict in the second movie. Our band of lego heroes led by awesome nice guy Emmett (Chris Pratt) have to band together to find the duplo invaders led by "TheQueenofWhateverIWannaBe" (Tiffany Haddish). Along the way we get a nice time travel story and of course a touching resolution about playing together.

I laughed till I cried watching the film. The Mad Max spoof - the arrogant angst of Lego Batman - the visual hilarity of Duplo world - another superb scene-stealing cameo from Richard Ayoade as a lego ice cream cone - annoyingly catchy pop songs that are knowingly telling you how annoyingly catchy they are - there's nothing not to like here.  But as I said - it just all feels so adult. I would be interested to hear how kids responded to it. 

THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART has a running time of 107 minutes and is rated PG. The film went on global release last weekend. 

21 JUMP STREET

21 JUMP STREET is a bunch of fun whether or not you're familiar with the original 1980s TV show that it affectionately spoofs.  Judd Apatow regular Jonah Hill slims down to play Schmidt, a former high-school geek turned cop, who's sent back to school under-cover to undercover a drug dealer.  Schmidt teams up with former high-school jock, Jenko, played by the not unattractive Channing Tatum showing impressive comedy timing.  A lot of the comedy comes from the classic "fish out of water" trope, with Jenko now forced to hang out with the science geeks and Schmidty becoming the popular guy in a post-modern high school full of enviro-geeks.  The true joy for this capitalist bastard reviewer is that it's the hippie do-gooders that are really the skanky drug-dealers.  And Dave Franco (James' kid brother) does a great job playing the smug little shit who's dealing dope. There's also probably the best movie cameo since ZOMBIELAND. 

Goofy, buddy comedies like these, when they work well, can seem effortless.  But there's a lot of skill in scripting a story that pokes fun at its source material without ever descending into snide pastiche; that knowingly winks at the viewer but still has heart.  Moreover, there's something wonderful about seeing a comedy double-act really hit it off on screen. Tatum and Hill just work really well together, and I can't wait for the sequel. 

21 JUMP STREET is on release in the US, UK, Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Ireland, Lithuania, Romania, Israel, Russia and New Zealand. It opens in Sweden on April 20th; in Chile and India on April 26th; in Argentina, Hong Kong, Hungary and Brazil on May 4th; in Germany, Singapore and Spain on May 10th; in Slovenia and Colombia on May 18th; in Norway on May 15th; in Belgium, France and the Netherlands on June 20th and in Portugal on June 28th.