Review by Neil Davey
Stars Ryan McPartlin, Yvonne Strahovski,
Roger Rose, Paul Michael Glaser | Written by Tom Rogers
UK certification U | UK RRP £14.99 | Runtime 78 minutes | Directed by Howard Baker
My love of LEGO’s spin-off products is the stuff of, well, if not legend, certainly much sniggering domestically. As a kid, I loved the bricks and kits, and the flexibility they gave to go crazy and design and build whatever the imagination permitted.
As an adult – technically if not mentally – I’ve been regularly blown away by the quality of the LEGO video games. These have been affectionate interpretations of film franchises, that have stayed true to the source material while adding their own amusing, brick-based spin to proceedings.
Now, with LEGO: The Adventures of Clutch Powers, the Danish toy giants have produced their first ever DVD movie. While it’s not of the quality of the titles that have inspired the games, it’s certainly of a quality that’ll keep kids amused and adults chuckling at regular intervals – not least as each DVD contains a free kids day pass to LEGOLAND.
In this tale, the LEGO Organisation is the UNCLE of the LEGO world. A team of scientists, engineers, adventurers and fabulous administrative support, the LEGO Organisation rights wrongs and protects the people with hastily built brick-based solutions to assorted problems. Their most famous agent is Clutch Powers. He’s a maverick, he works alone... but here he’s forced to team up when the LEGO prison is breached, evil wizard Mallock the Malign escapes and they find themselves embroiled in a war in the medieval kingdom of Ashlar. Yes. It’s a documentary...
Gags are plentiful and, if they rarely hit above the level of decent CBBC programming, well, who can blame ‘em? There are slapsticks laugh aplenty, some nice gentle sending-up of the action genre and even Paul Michael Glaser to offer some gravelly voice work. It may well have been assembled to a marketing report spec, but the result is still more than watchable.
EXTRAS None