For a guy who has produced entire albums of grimy coke raps and was in that gross "Blurred Lines" video, Pharrell Williams has maintained a remarkably wholesome image. He's the "Happy" guy with the oversized Arby's hat, making him the hip-hop artist you could bring home to your mother.
That's what makes it appropriate, even strangely inevitable, that his career-spanning documentary is a LEGO movie. It's bright, creative, and phun for the whole phamily.
Normally, I judge music docs by their willingness to undermine an artist's public image and show them in a negative light. Piece by Piece definitely isn't that, offering a fairly standard story of struggle, perseverance and talent that wins out in the end. But, by telling the whole story using LEGO animation, director Morgan Neville turns this flattering and familiar story into something unique and befitting its subject.
Historical reenactments are typically a recipe for documentary disaster. In LEGO form, however, Neville is able to blur the lines (ahem) between talking-head interviews and biopic-style storytelling. Even clichés of the form, like when a present-day Pharrell goes home to Virginia Beach to visit the housing project where he grew up, become vivid and immersive, seamlessly blending past and present. Other scenes are psychedelic, showing Pharrell in outer space or underwater, and original songs from the man himself make other sections akin to a musical.
There are interviews with many of Pharrell's best-known collaborators — Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, JAY-Z, Missy Elliott, Pusha T, Gwen Stefani, Justin Timberlake, etc. — and it's fun to see how they've been LEGO-fied. The audio mix sounded phenomenal in the theatre, with songs I knew he produced ("Drop It Like It's Hot," "Alright") and songs I forgot were by him ("Hollaback Girl," "I'm a Slave 4 U") all hitting hard.
And, in case you were wondering, those songs are all played with the "clean" radio edits, truly making this the a doc that kids and grown hip-hop heads alike can enjoy.
The 2024 Toronto International Film Festival runs September 5–15. Get information about tickets and screening at TIFF's website.