Piece By Piece
Piece By Piece
Piece By Piece creatively wraps the other animated biographies of famous people in the musical talent of the renowned super producer Pharrell Williams. Take Billy Idol’s biopic for example, helps create an animated collection of participants modeled on figures like in Lego. Morgan prays that the viewers will not simply see an inspiring artist at work, rather, the affectionate stories how the cult tracks “Drop It Like It’s Hot” or “Alright” emerged will dominate. However, in contrast to the 51 year-old visionary, he does not leave much of an impression anyway himself.
Piece By Piece will be released in the US on October 11 through Universal before it returns to the London Film Festival (as of November 8, it is available in UK cinemas). Over the last two decades Williams has established himself in both pop and rap creating hits for the likes of Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z as well as No Doubt and this is without mentioning the ‘Happy’ from Despicable Me 2 which is also a Grammy Award winning song by Williams which means there will be healthy demand for this particular biopic. (With the added benefit that most of the people he has worked with – Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Timberlake – all provide their own voice to Lego versions of themselves in the film.)
The documentary moves on to describe how Williams’ family relocated to live in the Virginia projects and how they supported his ambitions to perform and write – aspirations that grew stronger when he connected with classmate Chad Hugo. A collective The Neptunes is formed by the two of them but at first they are unable to make breakthroughs and soon under Williams guidance they win hip hop heavyweights over as hot producers. In the end, Williams achieves this goal but then he gets bored doing it which brings him into conflict with the aesthetics of the record business as well as with himself.
Right from the start, Williams reveals that he enjoys going outside the box and precisely for this reason, chooses the Lego animation format as he does not want to be part of the ordinary documentary film. Still, throughout the movie, there is a funny contradiction; since Neville has created a childrens’ movie, Comedy Sauce is expected to come up with a lot of ‘non-threatening’ and hooks-that-catch-theater-goers without the naughty words in most of the songs. Therefore Piece By Piece is a clean film in two respects. First, the songs have been cleaned of profanity and secondly, all the dirt shaded in Williams’ background has also been ignored. (For example, Gaye’s family was able to pursue successful legal actions against him as their late relative was the owner of the most of his major hit against their copyright. He claims that the song ‘Blurred Lines’ a number one song he co-wrote and produced which peaked in 2013 has elements of the song ‘Got To Give It Up’ by the late Marvin Gaye but I wrote something better.) Sometimes, to add to the complication, we see pieces that would breach that tension in the narrative, as these Lego puppets recreate scenes where Williams speaks to hip-hop personalities with every second word seemingly lost to profanity.
Relative quietness is what surrounded The Apprentice’s Oscar-nominated director Fernando Meirelles who had more acknowledged accomplishments in the industry. Since then, he has directed a few more films with musicians, and while this animatio lacks the visual cleverness of The Lego Movie, there however is a relaxed quality to the proceedings which brings out Williams’ infinite spontaneity and charm. That said, this film that fits within only slightly below the average length of 90 minutes, gets well into its monotonous history that boasts of a predictable climax. It indeed does not do what it is supposed to do and this is when Williams is on a rapid trajectory of reconstructing himself and his life after wild fame, only to be consumed with hubris and very poor choices creatively.
Given the circumstances, the worst part about Piece By Piece rising action suspense and eventual climax became the lines Williams and other frequented such despair and art is so corny one has to gaze into an abyss for. This primarily relates to the end sequences of the picture, which leaves the audience in the dark as to why “Happy”, a clearly inspiring and uplifting song was so important for him, and later on, how the tragedy of BLM fueled another hit simply entitled “Alright” performed by Kendrick Lamar in the year of 2015. Such transitions of Williams’ psyche are about to try and attempt- fail however and for BLM, such an choose is nearly offensive in its shallowness.
Fans who wish to indulge in the memories of the producer’s exceptional work may be happy, here it will be noted that the vigorous moving animation compliments the energizing impact of his music. However, lacking in any context explains that Piece By Piece makes the audience remember once again just how many smash hit Williams has made in the past years — especially in early 21st century, when the producers risked them all and changed the shape of pop music in their hands. But the descriptors of the protagonist’s musical talent are only the exaggerations typical of Piece By Piece. Judging by such light-hearted glimpses at what this film has to offer, one has to appreciate that even such a film would sell better than the film itself does.
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- Genre: Documentary
- Country: United States
- Director: Morgan Neville
- Cast: Pharrell Williams, Morgan Neville, Kendrick Lamar, Gwen Stefanim, Timbaland, Snoop Dogg, Justin Timberlake, ItzKiff
