The LEGO Ninjago Movie (2017)

In a framing story, a kid wanders into a store run by Mr. Liu (Jackie Chan). That story doesn’t mean anything and we are then dropped into the animated LEGO section. There, super villain Garmadon (voice: Justin Theroux) attacks the city of Ninjago on a daily basis. His high school age son (voice: Dave Franco) secretly fights him as The Green Ninja, along with five other teen ninjas. They are trained by Master Wu (voice: Jackie Chan again). But more important than ninja fighting is parent abandonment issues. So many abandonment issues.

Making animated LEGO movies was clearly a bad idea. So it was a shock that The LEGO Movie was smart and funny. Then came The Lego Batman Movie, which was significantly weaker, but still fun, particularly in its commentary on the darker versions of Batman. But now we’ve reached the assumed beginning: The LEGO Ninjago Movie was a terrible idea.

The previous two were family films. This is a kid’s movie meant to distract a grumpy child while you are getting his juice box. Since that’s all it is—bright shiny lights on a screen—I’d have thought they’d have been better going entirely with jokes and action. Both of those are present—not all that funny nor exciting—but the film is less interested in those things that the target audience might enjoy and far more focused on discussing abandonment, lots and lots of abandonment discussions. The “jokes” are about abandonment. The action pauses every few seconds to dwell on abandonment. I suppose it is trying to tell kids how to deal with their missing parents, but no child is going to learn anything about absentee fathers from this cheap mess.

Of course what The LEGO Ninjago Movie is really trying to teach children is to buy some Ninjago toys. I suspect that would be a better way to spend your money than on this movie.