If Emmet's Piece of Resistance ever goes missing, entire hours can be spent searching under couches for it.
Whether he's eating dinner, jumping on the trampoline, or riding his bike, there are questions ("Dad, can we build a double-decker couch please?"), quotes requoted ("Honey, where are my paaaaaaaaants?"), and songs sung ("Everything is awesome ..." ).
Sometimes, for a break, we'll play The Lego Movie Videogame together, in which we replay key scenes of The Lego Movie as Lego characters in some kind of nightmare-inducing meta-movie tie-in. It's actually super fun.
I haven't had to endure this much of a movie since my flatmates became obsessed with Tom Cruise's Jerry Maguire back in the 90s, spending their days endlessly quoting it word-for-word. That film got five Oscar nominations, and won one (Cuba Gooding, Jr, for Best Supporting Actor). I will never watch Jerry Maguire again - my flatmates ruined it for me. But I'm still not sick of The Lego Movie. I still sing along to the theme tune, I still love seeing Emmet doing jumping jacks after five coffees, and when I make my son clean up his Lego, I laugh when he calls me "President Business".
Most of all, I can't wait for the sequel.
How many Oscar nominations did The Lego Movie get? One, for Best Original Song. That's a joke. Academy Awards voters, sort this mess out. Admit you made a mistake, give the film a special nomination, send Emmet to the Oscars in his best pair of pants. It's time to make everything awesome again.
* Chris Schulz is an entertainment feature writer for the New Zealand Herald
Russell Baillie says:
Yes, I liked The Lego Movie too. I am sure it will remain a favourite among the inevitable sequels and the accompanying remixes of Everything Is Awesome. The Lego Movie proved you can take toys and make movies out of them without the results being Transformers. And that you can have Batman, Superman, Han Solo and Shakespeare in the same movie and it can make some sort of sense.
That zippy zaniness helped TLM become a hit among grown-ups surprised it was any good. That and how it took the mickey out of the product-placement entertainment biz that created it in the first place. It also had a message: throw away the instructions and be creative.
I'm just not sure the movie listened to its own good advice. So it's hard to get excited about its apparent snub for a best animated movie Oscar nomination.
Remember this isn't the award for best cartoon comedy. It's for making drawn stuff come alive on the big screen.
The 3D computer generated animation in TLM wants to resemble jerky stop-motion animation. It's an endless visual gag, one which just helps make it exhausting among the rat-a-tat pop culture jokes.
Visually, TLM is really nothing special. It even gives up on being an animated movie for its real-life scene starring Will Ferrell. Surely when the man behind Ron Burgundy turns up in the flesh in your animated movie in the flesh, that's got to be an Oscar disqualification right there.
* Russell Baillie is the Herald's entertainment editor
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