Five years ago, "The Lego Movie" hit the world by storm. As it released in theaters, people were not quite sure what to expect. After all, how could one write a competent and heartfelt comedy about little toy blocks? The idea, at the time, seemed to be completely absurd. Despite everyone's hesitation, "The Lego Movie" shocked the world as it turned out to be a smashing success. With beautifully stylized animation and writing that took full advantage of its seemingly childish and ridiculous source material, "The Lego Movie" turned out to be a hilarious comedy that took a refreshing look at the relationship between childhood and adulthood.

Needless to say, the announcement of "Lego Movie 2" was met with eager anticipation. The first film was such as success and with the same talent coming back to write, animate, and voice act once more, audience members were expecting big things. With high hopes and even higher expectations, I placed myself directly in the theater and prepared for an awesome cinematic experience that would rival the first "Lego Movie." I am happy to report that "Lego Movie 2" provided just as expected. I left the theater feeling those same heart-warming and nostalgic emotions that I felt when I watched the first film. Thus, needless to say, there are many praises I can give the newest "Lego Movie" installment.

I can not give enough credit to the amazing acting found in this movie. Often when you go see a movie with a famous actor in a voice acting role, you can find it hard to get invested in the characters. You hear a character speak and all you can think about is that actor standing in the recording studio with a microphone. However, I never once had this problem in this film which is amazing to me considering that Chris Pratt voices not one, but two major characters in this movie. The character of Emmet just is written so well and Chris Pratt just does such a good job that the two melds and fuse together perfectly. Emmet, due to this, feels like his own creation and not just a puppet for a voice actor to control. In fact, the entire cast of this film managed to pull off this feat and I am very impressed and floored by the level of talent found in this film.

On another note, the animation in this movie is just as wonderful to watch as the first film. Everything movies and operates in such a nice and clean format; I can definitely see the love and care that was put into making everything feel and move like actual Lego bricks and pieces. Plus, the colors and character designs are just so much fun to look at and do wonderful jobs at matching both the tone of the movie and the Lego-centered aesthetic that the film was trying to emulate. At certain points in the film, you would be able to convince me that this movie was made with stop motion instead of computer animation and I think this speaks highly of the animation's ability to capture aspects of our reality.

The first "Lego Movie" blessed us with a catchy song that seemed to echo in our heads and throughout our house for months and months on end. I am pleased to announce that this film cranks that up to an eleven by providing us with multiple songs that are more than ear-worms. We even get a type of musical aspect of the film as we have plot-related songs sung by characters within the movie. The soundtrack to this film is honestly a step up from the last movie and it is really refreshing to hear catchy songs that fit well with the tone of the movie.

Without giving any spoilers, the story of this movie was just handled very well. The first film accomplished an interesting story by combining the plots of its toy and human characters. This film is no different. The lesson taught within this film is a very relatable one to learn, especially for those that are undergoing an age shift. For this reason, I found the movie's message to be completely relatable and its execution was well done. I was extremely impressed, once again, at how the writers and directors of this film were able to capture the essence of real-world problems and situations through the plights of plastic Lego characters.

Was this movie completely perfect? No, I can't say that it captured that exact same magic as the first film. I think this mainly has to do with the knowledge level of the audience and how accustomed they are to the movie's comedy style. After all, with the first film, we didn't know what to expect. A movie about talking Legos astounded us fundamentally and thus the heartwarming messages and self-aware comedy caught us completely off-guard.

We were not expecting anything new or original form a movie with Legos. However, now that we have witnessed the first film, we kind of had an idea of what to expect. We anticipated the humor style and jokes. At some level, we could even attempt to make stabs at what kind of lesson would be learned in the end. The same magic could not be captured twice, but what we got was absolutely amazing.

Overall, I highly recommend going to see this new addition to the "Lego Movie' family. If you are in the market for a well-written story with amazing animation and a catchy soundtrack, you will find that "everything is awesome" with this movie.