''A Lego Brickumentary'' (also known as ''Beyond the Brick: A Lego Brickumentary'') is a 2014 Danish-American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

co-directed by Kief Davidson and

Daniel Junge Daniel Junge (born ) is an American documentary filmmaker. On February 26, 2012, he won the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) for the film '' Saving Face'', which he co-directed along with Pakistani filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chin ...

, focused on the Danish construction toy Lego. The film was released on July 31, 2015. The film received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its appeal but criticized the promotional tone of the film. It grossed over $100,000 against a production budget of $1 million, although it fared better in home media sales.

Synopsis

A LEGO Brickumentary offers a look at the global appeal of the LEGO building-block toy.

Cast

* Jason Bateman as narrator * Jamie Berard as himself * Alice Finch as herself * Bret Harris as himself * G.W. Krauss as himself * Dan Legoff as himself *

Nathan Sawaya Nathan Sawaya (born July 10, 1973) is an American artist who builds custom three-dimensional sculptures and large-scale mosaics from popular everyday items and is best known for his work with standard LEGO building bricks. Biography Born in ...

as himself * Brian Whitaker as himself * Iain Clifford Heath as himself *

Trey Parker Randolph Severn "Trey" Parker III (born October 19, 1969) is an American actor, animator, filmmaker, and composer. He is known for co-creating ''South Park'' (since 1997) and '' The Book of Mormon'' (2011) with his creative partner Matt Stone. ...

as himself *

Phil Lord Phil may refer to: * Phil (given name), a shortened version of masculine and feminine names * Phill, a given name also spelled "Phil" * Phil, Kentucky, United States * ''Phil'' (film), a 2019 film * -phil-, a lexical fragment, used as a root ter ...

as Writer/Director/Himself * Christopher Miller as Writer/Director/Himself

Release

The film had its premiere at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival on April 20, and was released in theaters on July 31, 2015.

Reception

Commercial performance

The film grossed $101,531 in theaters against a production budget of $1 million, in addition to $427,757 in domestic DVD sales.

Critical reception

The film received mixed reviews from critics.

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website

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reports a 55% rating based on 49 reviews, with an average score of 5.41/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "''A LEGO Brickumentary'' offers a cheerful overview of the popular toy that should satisfy diehard enthusiasts, but its aggressively promotional tone may turn off LEGO agnostics." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, the film has a 51 out of 100 rating based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Peter Sobczynski of RogerEbert.com gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of five. Peter Debruge of ''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

'' writes that the film feels like a "glorified DVD extra" for ''

The Lego Movie ''The Lego Movie'' is a 2014 computer-animated adventure comedy film written and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller from a story by Lord, Miller, and Dan and Kevin Hageman. Based on the Lego line of construction toys, its story focu ...

''. ''Spectrum Culture'' wrote that "Brickumentary is both interesting and informative as well as being fun. There may be no “other side” to this documentary, but it does, indeed, give great depth to the toy, its inception and evolution. It also manages, quite successfully, to never, ever be boring." Jordan Hoffman of the New York '' Daily News'' gave the film one out of five stars, noting "As a movie, it can be as annoying as stepping on a stray LEGO brick with your socks off."

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lego Brickumentary 2014 films 2014 documentary films Danish documentary films American documentary films Films about toys Films directed by Daniel Junge Brickumentary 2010s English-language films 2010s American films