Piece By Piece (Blu-ray Review)
Who doesn’t love a documentary? If done right, a documentary can be not only informative but wholly entertaining. Some of my favorite films have been documentaries, be it one like Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice that brings depth to stories we’ve heard before about a singing icon, to deep life dives like Marley, which covers the life of Bob Marley from birth to death. Piece By Piece does something completely different and turns the documentary on its ear. Read more about the Lego-ification of the life of Pharrell Williams below, and don’t fall to pieces while you do it.
Film:
PIECE BY PIECE is an unparalleled motion picture experience that invites audiences on a vibrant journey through the life of cultural icon Pharrell Williams. Told through the lens of LEGO® animation, turn up the volume on your imagination and witness the evolution of one of music’s most innovative minds.
Piece By Piece does something so inventive. Using the digital Lego animation realm to deliver the film with such a fun vibe is a key to the film’s success. It’s clear that the film is chronicling Williams’ life as completely as it can be. It helps greatly that the film is thorough without wasting time. At 93 minutes, Piece By Piece moves along from Pharrell’s beginnings in Virginia Beach, along with his friends forming The Neptunes, winning over icon Teddy Riley and appearing on songs by Wrecks-N-Effects and SWV.
Moving forward we see Lego Pharrell turning the Neptunes into a producing collective, and going from sought-after-hitmaker with The Neptunes and branching off into solo territory. It’s all told one piece at a time, and his collaborators all appear here in Lego form, and they do their talking head thing, but the animation carries it through.
Thankfully, the film doesn’t waste time with silly stories, and it doesn’t treat the Lego animation angle like a gimmick. Another thing to make the film a little more universal is that Pharrell and his creative team and director Morgan Neville work to make the film not only interesting for adults but something that kids can watch. We know a lot of Pharrell’s music and productions has been geared at adults, but nowadays is far more kid friendly. There are a few curse words here and there in the music and Rump Shaker is the song that launched Pharrell into his music career. They’ve even found a way to make Snoop Dogg’s loveable pothead persona family friendly. Overall, though, this is a family friendly music documentary.
I totally enjoyed the film as it was created, but it isn’t without issues. There is a sanitization that went into the creation to make it family friendly. There is also probably some wild kind of story that could’ve made the film a tad meatier. As it stands, the film is a lean and entertaining and altogether new way to tell an artist’s story. There is no denying Pharrell is someone who has created some special music in many spaces. He evolved from hip-hop into pop music and dance music and been a ubiquitous figure since the 90’s. There’s no denying this as you hear the hits unfolding during the film and then once it’s over you find yourself scrambling to make a bomb Pharrell playlist.
Music fans will find something to love here. Documentary fans will be challenged to see a documentary being creative in a new way and hopefully they will be as entertained as I was. I realize the film didn’t reach a huge audience theatrically, but I’m hopeful the film will do its thing at home and music fans and documentary fans grab a copy of this Blu-ray!
Video
Encoding: MPEG-4/AVC
Resolution: HD (1080P)
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1
Layers: BD-50
HDR: N/A
Clarity/Detail: Piece By Piece is a film made completely of computer animated Legos. The film is full of sharp digital details and is bereft of blemishes and any film issues as it was all captured digitally.
Depth: Depth is full on and complete with no odd camerawork done in post-production. Blur and any kind of camera issue you may see Is done as a stylistic choice.
Black Levels: Black levels go nice and dark with fun shadow detail in the animation too.
Color Reproduction: Colors are stunning, bright and beautiful here. The animation gives the color palette a nice sheen of candy coating and it’s a feast for the eyes.
Flesh Tones: N/A
Noise/Artifacts: Flawless.
Audio
Audio Format(s): English Dolby TrueHD 7.1, French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1, English DVS Dolby Digital 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French
Dynamics: Music should be and is the priority of this mix! Dialogue and music are the highlights with some cute panning and surround effects popping up at times too.
Height: N/A
Low-Frequency Extension: Bass pounds for music cues and sound effects, with the Neptunes and Pharrell productions asserting themselves with aggressive authority.
Surround Sound Presentation: Surrounds have panning effects in moments where a “concert” would be on screen, or as traffic passes with a song playing in the car as it passes. It’s all nice use of the channels overall.
Dialogue Reproduction: Dialogue is next in line to music but fully intelligible and fantastic.
Extras:
Indicative of typical smaller releases from Universal, the sole extra for Piece By Piece is a miniscule EPK feature with Pharell and director Morgan Neville talking about the film. It’s called Building The Story. Ha. Ha. Ha.
The film comes with a slipcover and digital code, but no bundled DVD.
Summary:
Piece By Piece takes the Rock Doc and turns it on its ear. The Lego animation gives the film a creative edge we haven’t seen in a documentary in a long time. The choice to bring a family-friendly vibe to the film may alienate some viewers but I’d say they’re missing out on a very fun, inventive and interesting documentary about one of pop music’s greatest working producers and artists. Technical specs for the film are tops and the light extras are a mere gripe when you see how well the film has been lovingly reproduced on Blu-ray. This one is worth a look for music fans, and documentary fans alike!
Get your copy of Piece By Piece HERE
Adam Toroni-Byrne
Adam is a lifelong physical media collector. His love of collecting began with a My First Sony radio and his parent's cassette collection. Since the age of 3, Adam has collected music on vinyl, tape and CD and films on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and UHD Blu-ray. Adam likes to think of himself as the queer voice of Whysoblu. Outside of his work as a writer at Whysoblu, Adam teaches preschool and trains to be a boxer although admittedly, he's not very good.
