If you’re sick of formulaic musical biopics — which is to say, virtually all musical biopics — Morgan Neville’s “Piece by Piece” is a breath of contemporary air. Pharrell Williams, an artist with extra #1 hits than Will Riker and Jack Ransom in a bar struggle, has a story to inform about his childhood, his profession, and his artistic course of, and it’s not your typical rags to riches story. (Also he’s a “Star Trek” fan so if nobody else will get that joke, at the least he'll.)
“Piece by Piece” is an animated documentary, which is not a brand-new idea but it surely hasn’t been finished to demise both. Morgan Neville, who received an Oscar for the music documentary “20 Feet from Stardom,” sat Pharrell Williams and his mates, household and inventive collaborators down for prolonged interviews, after which animated their story utilizing the identical fashion as the assorted “LEGO Movies” everybody loves a lot. It’s a charming strategy, even when it’s additionally a big industrial for toys.
But to listen to Pharrell inform it, the LEGO aesthetic connects with him on a private degree. From his perspective there is nothing new on this universe so all the things we create is made out of pre-existing items. His music stems from his life experiences, massive and small, and when he compiles a beat collectively it takes bodily kind, a assortment of LEGO items that pulsate with rhythm.
When it’s not attempting to be profound about LEGO, “Piece by Piece” is being humorous about it. Anecdotes about working at McDonalds and getting hooked on Chicken McNuggets are amusing in their very own proper, however utterly absurdist when there’s no LEGO brick sufficiently small to drag off the phantasm. So Pharrell simply horks down beige 1×1 bricks which are virtually the dimensions of his head.
Pharrell additionally explains that he experiences synesthesia, which implies he processes music visually, and that offers “Piece by Piece” an excuse to get trippy. Lots of colours, numerous bizarre photographs. It’s not too trippy although. Neville’s animated doc takes place within the music business but it surely’s a family-friendly movie, and thus so are the edgiest music lyrics. And the scenes with Snoop Dogg reveal that the mysterious cloud of white smoke that follows him round is simply “PG Spray,” which the characters aerosol round themselves within the hopes grown-ups will snicker and youngsters received’t give it some thought too onerous.
“Piece by Piece” is designed with youngsters in thoughts. It’s a laid again storybook, with inspirational moments and surprisingly muted drama. Pharrell’s life appears to have by some means averted most of the music business’s most pernicious clichés, so the movie doesn’t have subplots of substance abuse and even melodramatic shouting matches with his mates, household and fellow musicians. His largest struggles, to listen to “Piece by Piece” inform it, was overextending himself with facet initiatives and a interval of artistic burnout.
This lack of depth isn’t a downside in Neville’s movie, it’s a promoting level. “Piece by Piece” isn’t about increase Pharrell’s legend, it’s concerning the worth of onerous work and private development. These are a few of life’s most necessary classes however motion pictures steadily make them look like they all the time emerge from outer battle, when a lot of the time it’s simply buckling down, perfecting your craft, paying your dues, making time on your family and friends, and never shedding sight of your core values. “Piece by Piece” makes use of whimsy to make these experiences entertaining, whereas many biopics fall into the lure of changing actuality into dramatic contrivance.
So it goes that “Piece by Piece” is slight, ever so slight, but reasonably spectacular. Pharrell is a likable fellow, and the remainder of the interviewees are form and self-effacing. It amuses them that a man with such childlike exuberance and eccentric vogue selections has conquered the music world, however they’re all very glad he did, both as a result of he’s a good man or as a result of he made them a lot of cash. Usually each. It’s reassuring to suppose that at the least as soon as in a whereas the music business doesn’t chew you up and spit you out. It looks as if Pharrell simply obtained gnawed on a little.
And in fact there are the songs. There are so many songs. “Piece by Piece” doesn’t cease to play all of them of their entirety as a result of it’s not Bernardo Bertolucci’s director’s reduce of “1900” and we don’t have on a regular basis on this planet. If you solely know Pharrell Williams from his hit single “Happy” you should have your thoughts utterly blown by what number of traditional songs he and his producing accomplice Chad Hugo have been immediately chargeable for, or at the least guided to fruition. It’s such an unbelievable, excessive quantity, prime quality inventive output that it’s legitimately onerous to course of, however to listen to Pharrell inform it, it was his day job.
“Piece by Piece” doesn’t hit you want a ton of bricks. It’s mild-mannered with good intentions and amusing sight gags. But it’s that reality — its very existence as a musical biography that simply needs the viewers to be comforted and impressed — which makes it particular. Morgan Neville could have made the newest in a lengthy line of large LEGO commercials, however he’s made one with actual human decency and soul.
