Piece by Piece (2024)
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Piece by Piece Movie Review
Piece by Piece is a 2024 animated documentary film directed by Morgan Neville and starring Pharrell Williams. It’s a flawed, far from engaging documentary.
Lego bricks tell the life story of singer/songwriter and record producer Pharrell Williams – from his childhood in Virginia to his success in the music and fashion industry. Animated documentary is a rare art form and I am always up for this type of hybrid product. More people should realize that animation is actually quite adept at handling documentary storytelling as it can stylistically follow the life of its subject in interesting ways.
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But one issue remained here and that is the fact that I am simply not all that interested in its subject. Documentaries are highly dependent on your interest in their subject, but this time around I couldn’t be bothered to care all that much. Pharrell Williams is a fine singer, but his song Happy became tiresome as I’ve heard it way too many times, and I simply wasn’t interested enough to listen about his entire career for an hour and a half.
Morgan Neville did his best to make it more interesting by including solid editing, a versatile tone to it and a couple of artistic and ingenious moments that utilized those Lego bricks so well. The animation is terrific and I particularly loved how the more emotional scenes were accompanied by Lego bricks changing shapes and accompanying the subject’s mood deftly.
So yes, Piece by Piece is artistically inclined and also very well scored naturally. The soundtrack is stellar, a lot of fun and quite moody too. I just wished that the overall story was interesting as Williams did not really have that fascinating a life nor did he really face insurmountable obstacles. You cannot really make a movie about a man who wasn’t worthy of getting a film in the first place. The film also reeked of narcissism and entitlement as it focused way too heavily on the artist’s accomplishments and strengths and rarely on his weaknesses or failures.
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Piece by Piece benefits from very strong animation and a great utilization of Lego bricks in the overall story. The movie is artistically inclined and featuring a solid soundtrack. My main issue here is that I simply did not care for its subject and I would contend that Pharrell Williams’ life was simply not interesting enough to get an entire movie out of it. It felt like a vanity project first and foremost.
My Rating – 3
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