Where were you the first time you heard Pharrell Williams? Honestly, you probably don’t remember, and that’s fine. After all, the last 30 years of music have sounded the way they have because of his beats and production. He’s handed acts from Nelly to Madonna to Justin Timberlake to Pusha T to No Doubt some of their biggest singles, plus subjected us to the insufferable “Happy” from Despicable Me 2. Of course he’s earned a biographical documentary from Oscar-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?). But he’s also got the clout to narrate his own biography and have the entire story be told through digital Lego.
It’s a weird pitch, and one that came from Williams in a seemingly offhand comment in conversation with Neville. However, it sort of works. True, small children lured in by Minions and the animation style will probably pass out around the time the mogul becomes a staggeringly wealthy brand ambassador. But there’s an infectious giddiness to the visual conceit, like how Williams’ beats are physical entities, little glowing and bouncing accumulations of Lego pieces that will make you groove in your seat.
But there’s also something a little self-serving about the visual symbolism of Lego. It’s a plastic shield for Williams, who becomes a candy-colored toy. Predictably, Neville softens up some of the more challenging edges of Williams as a musician and as a businessman. So there are giggles at the Lego reenactments of some of his most famous music videos because of the number of bikinis – but plastic don’t jiggle, and so Williams is never pushed on how much of his work had a deeply sexist streak to it. (He may have distanced himself from the misogyny of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” but it’s hard to imagine he had trouble cashing the check.)
Neville also has a tough time writing around one of the most core relationships in Williams’ career, that with Chad Hugo – co-founder of rap-rock collective N.E.R.D., the other half of production duo the Neptunes, and Williams’ longest-lasting and most meaningful collaborator. He’s not exactly ignored, but it sometimes feels like his contribution is dramatically understated. That’s a state of affairs made all the more noticeable since the two have been embroiled in a lawsuit since April – one based on the contention that Williams hasn’t treated Hugo like an equal partner. It’s like a softer version of how Al Jourgensen minimized the contributions of Paul Barker to their work as industrial power players Hypno Lux/Hermes Pan – or, more broadly, Lennon badmouthing McCartney. It feels like the film is deliberately distracting you away from half the story.
But then, what can one expect from a Lego biopic, especially a PG-rated one? It’s inevitably going to shy away from anything challenging or complex and so feels tonally unbalanced when trying to tackle the Black Lives Matter protests. If anything, that sequence feels like a way to squeeze in Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” rather than provide any real insight. But then Piece by Piece is selling the sweet-natured veneer that Williams has promoted for the last couple of decades. It’s scarcely skin-deep because there’s not even any skin, and it’s hard to imagine we’ll get much more insight from the other upcoming Pharrell-approved biopic, Michel Gondry’s musical Atlantis.
But taken on its own fluff piece terms, Piece by Piece is an interesting sprint through three decades of cultural relevance and relatively scandal-free living. If Pharrell’s happy, then it seems we have to be too.
This article appears in October 11 • 2024.
