If you've heard any pop or hip-hop music in the past quarter-century, you've probably heard music performed or produced by Pharrell Williams like 2013's "Happy" from the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack. Now he gets his own documentary retrospective directed by Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom) with a truly unique twist: It's told with Legos. As in, everyone and everything is depicted with animation like The Lego Movie.
Starting with his childhood in Virginia Beach where he went to school with his future Neptunes collaborator Chad Hugo as well as future hip-hop superstars Timbaland and Missy Elliott (I had no idea they hailed from the same place and time), it colorfully follows their struggles to get discovered in a town without a music industry until New Jack Swing kingpin Teddy Riley plants his operation in town.
Including interviews with Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Pusha-T, along with various music biz folks, it's your usual career overview spiced up with the Lego presentation which allows for the beats he makes to be depicted as glowing, pulsing constructs. It definitely makes for a different experience.
Where Piece by Piece stumbles is in the usual places like never telling the viewer what freaking year any of these events are happening and breezing over details like his attending Northwestern University for a couple of years and that Timbaland is his cousin which I just discovered looking at his Wikipedia page. (Seriously, WTF? I'm docking a half-point for that omission.)
Why he split from his friend and partner Hugo is never explained and the obligatory veer into race politics where a wealthy black man who sought to be a crossover sensation and made plenty of money off of white folks decides to traffic in the damnable and debunked "Hands up! Don't shoot!" lie for a Kendrick Lamar track dampens the fun.
There is also a problem with the Lego conceit in that by the virtue of portraying everyone as minifigs, they all look the same other than hair styles and at times it gets difficult to recognize who's talking because they only flash credits once or twice. At one point I thought they'd introduced a new speaker, but it was Williams in different clothes, or "clothes" since they're just decals on plastic.That said, the visuals are as good as the various Lego movies.
When I become Emperor of the Universe I intend to use N.E.R.D.'s "Lapdance" as my walkout music - you know it from Kingpin's introduction in the Ben Affleck Daredevil movie - and as a "He did that?" primer of Williams' career, Piece by Piece is a different way of covering the high points (and a few of the low ones), but despite the unique animation format, it ultimately falls a little flat in its superficiality. But because of the style, I ended up watching it when I may not have bothered with a straight-up presentation.
Score: 6.5/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Currently exclusively on Peacock.)
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