Pharrell’s ‘Piece by Piece’ Lego Biopic Gets High Marks From Critics

Piece By Piece, the animated Pharrell Williams Lego biopic, has been getting rave reviews from film critics. 

The documentary uses Lego toy blocks to bring the story of the recording artist, producer, songwriter, and fashion designer to the screen.

The film has 33 reviews and a 91 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes as of Wednesday afternoon, with most critics embracing the unusual concept for the Morgan Neville-directed film. 

Kevin Bourne of Shifter magazine said, “Piece By Piece is one of the most inspirational movies we’ve seen in a very long time.”

Radheyan Simonpillai of The Guardian felt the film works because Pharrell and the rest of the cast are “natural orators with terrific origin stories to tell.”

Isobel Grieve of The Mary Sue geek girl website wrote, “an excellent experiment in musical documentary filmmaking that works fantastically well with Pharrell Williams’ incredible life story and impressive discography.”

However, Robert Daniels of RogerEbert.com wasn’t as impressed, writing, “The overstretched and underthought ‘Piece by Piece‘ is always struggling to check the boxes of its genre requirements.”

Pharrell leads the voice cast of the movie, which shows him as a struggling student in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

He lives in a housing project with his parents, and loves music, particularly songs from Stevie Wonder.

Pharrell becomes friends with Chad Hugo. The musically-inclined students form a duo called The Neptunes and perform at their school’s talent show for legendary R&B record producer Teddy Riley.

Impressed, Teddy signs the two to a contract and they begin their journey to become one of the most influential producing and writing teams of their generation.

Pharrell eventually went solo and is known for such hits as Happy.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said he wanted the film to focus on building dreams.

“I’m humble now, but it tells you the story of how I became humble,” he said. “And what I love about it is, from 8 to 80, it’s never too late for you to think about your dreams and build them piece by piece. It’s never too late for you to go pick up a Lego set and make things and be a co-creator. It’s never too late to wake up to that. It’s never too late to gain that self-awareness. This is my dream, for people to have that.”

The star-studded voice cast also includes Daft Punk, Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Pusha T, Snoop Dogg, and N.O.R.E. — all in Lego form.

Piece By Piece arrives in theaters across the nation on Friday, Oct. 11.