“Piece By Piece” Review

Casey Medeiros ’25 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

In the last few years, there has been an influx of musical biopics and artist documentaries. From Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis to the upcoming Bob Dylan film A Complete Unknown, films following the lives and careers of music icons have become very popular recently. The standard tropes and cliches of biopics have even become so common that films like Walk Hard and Popstar have parodied and satirized them. So when it came time to make one for the legendary Pharrell Williams, an artist famous for doing his own thing and thinking outside the box, a traditional biopic wouldn’t do. In classic Pharrell fashion, Piece by Piece does something unprecedented for a documentary: it takes the form of an animated Lego movie.

If you’ve listened to any popular music since the 2000s, you’ve definitely heard Pharrell Williams and his signature four-count start. Whether it be as an artist on massively successful singles “Happy” and Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky”, or as a producer for some of the biggest pop, hip-hop, and R&B songs of the 2000s and 2010s, Pharrell has been not only one of the most popular musicians but also one of the most ground-breaking and influential. With such an iconic career, it’s obvious that Pharrell would be the latest subject of a biographical music film. But as to what the film ended up being, it’s anything but obvious.

At the beginning of the film, Pharrell asks the director, Morgan Neville, “What if life is like a LEGO set?”. He goes on to wonder whether there is really anything new, or if like with LEGOs, you’re just borrowing pieces from everything else to create something unique and that’s your own. It’s this view of the world that is a perfect encapsulation of Pharrell’s creative spirit, which is why when he tells Neville they should tell his story with LEGO pieces, it makes perfect sense. For a career as inspirational and imaginative as Pharrell’s, using the medium that children use to imagine and create is an apt choice.

Director Morgan Neville is no stranger to success and acclaim either. As a documentary filmmaker, his film Won’t You Be My Neighbor? about Mister Rogers became the highest-grossing bio-documentary of all time, and his film 20 Feet from Stardom won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. So with this level of talent behind the camera, a subject as interesting as Pharrell Williams (who wrote five new songs for the film), and an approach as bold as an animated LEGO bio-documentary, it was bound to be a compelling and enjoyable watch. So even though the storytelling can sometimes fall into the standard biopic formula and feel a little too sanitized, Piece by Piece is still a fun and inspiring film with inventive and engaging animation.

Like many other music documentaries, the film tells the story of Pharell William’s life and career. Using interviews with Pharrell’s parents and childhood friends as well as Pharrell himself, the film starts with his childhood in a housing project in Virginia Beach and depicts his vivid imagination and creativity, his developing love of music, and his struggles in school. When his Grandmother gives him a snare drum, it spurs the idea in him that he can be a musician. He joins the school band, where he meets future collaborator and bandmate Chad Hugo. They form The Neptunes and start making music together, also collaborating with fellow Virginia Beach natives Missy Elliot, Timbaland, and Pusha T. He performs at local events and persistently calls labels and A&Rs, but has trouble breaking into the industry, until he decides to focus on making beats and producing for artists. From there, we follow the rise of Pharrell into stardom – he becomes a superstar producer for artists like Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake, forms his band N.E.R.D., wins awards, and releases his own solo music while struggling to balance artistic integrity and commercial success. It hits all the predictable beats of a typical bio-documentary, and while it’s not re-inventing narrative storytelling, the visual style and the light approach make this a fittingly original biopic for a singular artist.

Making a LEGO documentary about Pharrell Williams is a bizarre proposition on the surface and easily could have gone wrong, but the way the film utilizes the format to represent Pharrell’s creativity keeps it from feeling gimmicky. It’s filmed like a standard bio-documentary – “talking-head” interviews, dramatic recreations of events, etc. – just done with LEGOs. This choice gives the animation a vibrant and colorful feel and also allows for some really creative storytelling choices. One such example is the way the film depicts Pharrell’s synesthesia, which causes him to see colors and shapes when he listens to music. The LEGO animation allows for his synesthesia to be animated literally and in a beautifully expressive way, which gives the film a lot of character and personality. The film’s expressive LEGO animation is also used to portray Pharell’s obsession with water. He grew up in a housing complex called Atlantis Apartments, and his childhood daydreams about swimming in the underwater city of the same name and conversing with King Neptune, as well as his dreams of going to space and interacting with Carl Sagan, are animated in similarly creative ways. In addition to the delightful animation, it’s also just very amusing to see LEGO recreations of Pharrell’s famous music videos and LEGO interviews with icons like Snoop Dogg and Kendrick Lamar. 

In an appeal to a family-friendly audience, the film is rated PG and avoids explicit lyrics or subject matter not suitable for children. Pharrell has said that he wanted his kids to be able to see and understand his story at a young age, so making this both an animated LEGO movie and giving it a PG rating allows for that to happen. While this choice might prevent it from going as deep as it could, it does allow the film to reach the young audience it hopes to inspire the most. This is also a good choice for a film with such colorful LEGO animation and with such an optimistic story, even if it often comes off a little too sanitized as a result. This doesn’t mean the film shies away from more serious subject matter though. For example, the film depicts the Black Lives Matter protests and the police brutality that inspired the Pharrell-produced and co-written protest song “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar, in addition to some of the realities of growing up poor in a marginalized community. However, the film always approaches these more serious topics with a deep sense of positivity, with Pharrell reflecting on his childhood in the Atlantis Apartments: “If man can make it on the moon, we can make it out of the projects”. But for an artist with such an eventful career, it does sometimes feel a little disappointing that it can’t be explored to its full extent.

Another thing holding this film back from reaching any deeper truths is the direct involvement of Pharrell Williams. Anytime the subject of a film is directly involved in the making of it, it tends to soften the edges of the story and the potential flaws an artist may have. One blatant example of this from the film is the complete avoidance of touching on the conflict and drama of why N.E.R.D. broke up for a period of time in the 2000s, instead dismissing it with one throw-away line. (The film also expectedly avoids the current legal battle between Pharrell and Chad Hugo). In a head-scratching moment, the film also plays “Blurred Lines” while celebrating Pharrell’s hits, completely avoiding the lawsuit that determined it copied Marvin Gaye and the backlash and controversy around the song (which prompted Pharrell to say he regretted it in 2019). It’s bizarre that they decided to put the song in this film and not touch on the issues around it, especially when they easily could have just left it out and avoided the baggage that comes with it. But while this film is very flattering and not looking to portray Pharrell in a negative light, it does touch on how there were a few years when his ego and arrogance caused him to chase mainstream success and lose touch with the fun and artistic exploration of his early career. However, the film doesn’t really depict any other significant struggles or hardships faced by Pharrell in his career. Despite this, the film sometimes feels like it’s forcing itself to fit into a familiar narrative structure which requires adversity and obstacles to overcome. 

Even though the film may play it safe with the narrative, it does manage to produce some real emotion. Beyond being joyous, the moments with Pharrell’s family were very touching. From seeing his relationship with his late Grandmother and his parents to seeing how his kids inspire him, as well as to the first-ever interview with his wife Helen Williams, these moments help give a rather light film a little bit of emotional weight. 

So after being barraged with what feels like one formulaic biopic after another for the last few years, Piece by Piece is a refreshing film that takes a creative risk and tries to stand out. The film carves out a unique lane for itself by doing something different with the LEGO animation, and its goal of seeking to inspire young kids to follow their dreams makes it very sweet and entertaining to watch. But while the film’s colorful visuals are certainly a unique approach and capture Pharrell’s essence in a way unlike any other, it makes the moments when the film conforms to the conventions of a standard biopic a little disappointing. It’s still effective at being a fun and inspirational story of Pharrell’s life and career, but it’s held back from resulting in anything more by having the story feel a little too safe and cliche. It may lack some depth and feel a little empty, but Pharrell Williams and Morgan Neville take what might be an otherwise by-the-numbers film and turn it into something sincerely uplifting and inventive. Of all the possible versions of a Pharrell Williams biopic, a visually innovative one that can serve as inspiration for a new generation of young musicians is definitely one of the better outcomes.