Credit where it’s due: In a sea of formulaic biographical documentaries about musicians, “Piece by Piece,” about the life of the hitmaker and entrepreneur Pharrell Williams, stands out boldly. Not because it doesn’t follow the usual narrative formula. It absolutely does: humble beginnings, rocket toward stardom, crash and then, inevitably, resurrection. That’s all so standard to the genre that it’s practically calcified.
No, “Piece by Piece” pops because everyone — including Williams and the film’s director, Morgan Neville — is played by animated Legos.
This choice, which was Williams’s idea, comes off less gimmicky than it sounds. Legos have proven to be remarkably versatile utility players in the past decade. They’ve performed as Ninjas and Batman and themselves ever since “The Lego Movie” (2014) opened and became both a staggering commercial hit and an instant classic. The movie was clever and inventive, but the choice of toy worked, too: Legos are recognizable, beloved and, most important, endlessly open to reinterpretation. There’s no reason not to mingle your Lego Hogwarts set with your Lego Star Wars set in the shadow of your Lego Eiffel Tower alongside your little cousin’s Duplo trucks, and that’s the fun of them — the potential for chaos and imagination.
For “Piece by Piece,” the Legos are taking on a new challenge: playing real people. Animated feature-length documentaries have become more common in recent years — “Waltz With Bashir” (2008) and “Flee” (2021) are two significant examples — but here the animation is aggressively nonrealistic, on purpose. The subjects, which include Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake and Daft Punk, show up rendered as cylinder-headed, block-bodied minifigures, Lego parlance for the people-shaped pieces. Minifigure Williams and Minifigure Neville sit across from each other, chatting about the movie and Williams’s life. The voices are real — Neville interviewed the plethora of collaborators and artists that Williams has worked for and with — but we only ever see their Lego versions, with some distinguishing facial hair or outfit.
The playfulness fits Williams’s aesthetic, which ranges from producing beats and albums for that dizzying array of artists to recording his own megahit “Happy” to collaborating on lines of streetwear, fragrances, eyeglasses, sneakers and skin care. He’s clearly bursting with ideas all the time, and that’s the narrative of the film: This is a man who never stops dreaming of ways to remix the world. It’s his playground, his sandbox. Legos fit right in.
The effect of the animation is oddly charming, and elevates the watchability of “Piece by Piece” more than you might expect. It’s impossible not to giggle, for instance, when Minifigure Snoop Dogg — whose work with Williams on “Drop It Like It’s Hot” gave Snoop his first chart-topping hit — appears in a cloud of weed smoke, or when a rapper’s music video is reinterpreted with Legos.
Furthermore, the animated format lends some flexibility to how key moments can be shown — a Jay-Z show at which Williams performed, for instance — that feels less contrived than it might have otherwise. Characters can turn in the middle of a re-creation and address the audience directly; there would be no way to make that work in the live-action format. (Also, everyone is very cute.)
The story they tell is not, to be honest, all that interesting. Williams was born in 1973 and grew up in Virginia Beach (where he went to the same high school as the rapper and producer Timothy Mosley, a.k.a. Timbaland). Obsessed with music as a child, Williams created it with friends throughout his youth, eventually hitting it big as part of the production duo the Neptunes, which he formed with Chad Hugo. (Despite a falling-out with Williams, Hugo was interviewed for and appears in the film — as a Lego, of course.)
“Piece by Piece” is largely a chronicle of all of the chart toppers that the Neptunes, and then Williams alone, had a hand in making for some of the biggest artists of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The most buoyant section of the film takes place in this time, with Williams and Hugo dashing between recording sessions. It’s like a supercut of turn-of-the-century hits — Nelly’s “Hot in Herre,” Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” and bunches more — and the fact that everyone’s a Lego keeps it feeling playful rather than overwhelming.
By the end, the film feels a bit crammed into the shape of a biopic. Williams did have some fallow years following the phenomenal success of “Happy,” written for the soundtrack of “Despicable Me 2.” (Yes, Lego Minions appear to him.) He attributes his floundering to losing sight of his faith, humility and sense of creative playfulness.
Yet he came back, eventually, and the film ends with his many creative ventures taking off. He also gained a renewed sense of his own role in the world, crystallized by the film when he co-produces and performs on Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright,” a song that has been used as an anthem at protests against police shootings since its release. All of this is interesting, but it happens quickly. The rhythm of the film emphasizes Williams’s successes far more than his failures, and so the main takeaway from “Piece By Piece” is that Williams is one very talented Lego, er, man.
Which is, at this juncture in documentary history, pretty much the point of any authorized biographical documentary about a musician. These films are everywhere, often made with the involvement of either the musician (if they’re alive) or their estate. That means, quite reasonably, that the narrative is controlled by the subject to some degree. Even a very open and honest subject will naturally exercise some selective memory and judgment in the crafting of the movie. Any “revelations” are heavily filtered and chosen to generate headlines that market the film. And it won’t go to the screen without their approval.
That means most of these films are little more than brand-building exercises, ways for fans to feel more connected to the artists they love. This fact doesn’t invalidate them entirely, and skilled filmmakers like Neville (“20 Feet From Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”) are able to work within those constraints. But there are constraints, and audiences would do well to remember them; you’ll never get the whole story from an authorized biopic, if indeed the “whole story” is what fans are after.
The reason these docs proliferate, of course, is that we watch them, and artists like having them. The reason we watch a musician documentary isn’t to learn secrets; it’s to enjoy the artists we already love, or learn more about someone whose work interests us, or just revel in some fun footage. And “Piece By Piece” sidesteps feeling rote by doing something that seems, frankly, bizarre. That it works at all is a product of the quirky form fitting the subject well. It’s chaotic, sure. But that’s the fun of it.
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