Piece by Piece directed by Morgan Neville is a creative documentary that tells the story of Pharrel Williams through the unexpected media of Lego. This media form of film is not foreign to modern filmmakers and this is certainly not the first Lego film, however, it is the first documentary that is fully animated through Lego. 

The story starts when Williams is in middle school and shows challenges that he faced in his life as well as how he made himself known in the music industry. The film has an animated and exaggerated narration, despite the film being in documentary format and animated over.   

The choice to animate with Lego, though having the intention of alluding to an added creativity and an “outside of the box” aspect, fell flat. The entirety of this choice felt as though it had been done before, though the emphasis that it hadn’t been done in this niche was overplayed in the film, giving too much emphasis and credit of creativity to itself. It comes across as arrogant of an idea that has been in the mainstream for a long time. The idea also, that Lego is a corporation adds to the fallacy of creativity that the movie creates. It gives the same sense, when you remember this notion, as seeing a big celebrity in an ad that their work is completely unrelated to.

The soundtrack consisted primarily of Williams’ music and told the progression of his work through his own media. Many scenes would show the process of making his music, how he would come up with new ideas, how he collaborated with other artists, and the recording process. This added a lot of insight into his story, explaining emotional influences and the music making process to an audience that is unfamiliar with the world of making music. As an artist, it shows how the experience was highly personal for him and adds an exceptional amount of depth to the storytelling. 

Throughout the film, Williams told us a great deal about his life and past experiences. He opened up and was very vulnerable about many things. However, the overall tone stayed pretty joyful, centering mainly around the art of music and less around the story of his life. 

In our opinion, Pharrell did a good job of capturing how his music career started and took off. We think that it was creative to animate a Lego world on top of a pre filmed documentary.

Overall, this movie seemed to be creative as it has been claimed as the first documentary in Lego format. However, this aspect of the movie carries its sensationalism and when you factor in the numerous other films animated to be in Lego format, the film falls flat as a creative vessel. Its impact is extremely minimal. We give Piece by Piece directed by Morgan Neville a 2.5 out of 5 stars.