Here’s a challenge for even the most respected and revered documentarians: how do you make your film different than the usual profile/biography? Mind you, there have already been some exceptional showbiz docs this year with SUPER/MAN and FAYE. Not to mention the two-part four-hour look at Steve Martin made by this film’s director, Morgan Neville. Is there a fresh way to present the “talking heads” interviews, the “reanactments”, and the archival footage? How about animation, much like the recently lauded FLEE? That’s a start, but should it be standard hand-drawn 2-D, or the molded CGI? Yes to the latter, but do it in the Lego brick style since Warner’s let their license lapse. This gives the title a double meaning as Neville examines the life and career of Pharrell Williams, step by step, or rather PIECE BY PIECE.
After a brief opening sequence of the film’s subject playing with his wife and children, Williams is whisked away to a section of his home where Neville and his crew are setting up for an interview shoot. Neville is stunned when Williams shares his epiphany that his life should be “Lego-animated”. The story then shifts several decades in the past, as we see Pharrell as a fun-loving boy growing up in a housing project in Virginia Beach, VA. With the ocean nearby and a big Posiedon statue towering over it, and living in the Atlantis apartments, Williams believes that there was “something in the water”. Perhaps that’s why he saw colors when looking into the speakers of his “boom box”. Ditto when he enjoyed the church choir with her adored grandmother. It seemed inevitable he’d form a band with some of his pals. Williams and BFF Chad Hugo were the driving force behind the Neptunes (another water riff). Their hopes rose when a big music producer opened a big recording studio. After being spotted at the local school’s talent show, the Neptunes became part of the studio crew, going from errand work (getting coffee, etc.) to making music suggestions. From there they tried getting the NYC labels interested. Eventually, they got some airplay near their hometown and were soon collaborating with Pusha-T, N.O.R.E., Snoop Dogg, Gwen Stefani, Timbaland, and Busta Rhymes. Soon he and Chad were major producers garnering awards and working with the best of the biz including Justin Timberlake, Daft Punk, and Jay-Z. After marrying and starting a family, Williams yearns to express his only musical voice. And with the “Happy” help of Gru and his Minions, it all “clicks”…
So yes, it does give a new energy and sparkle to the old documentary tropes. There’s a playful quality to everything, particularly in the sequences set in the old Virginia Beach hometown as people frolic (on foot, bikes, and skateboards) in the bright sun as the Blue Angels fly overhead. A satiric element is added in the later scenes involving other music superstars, especially Snoop Dogg as they’re surrounded by mist emitting from a spray bottle labeled “PG haze”. It’s also fun to see the Lego logo in the ocean foam as a fish breaks the surface. I had seen a CBS Sunday Morning profile of Williams a few days ago, so I was a bit surprised that the story stopped short of his recent foray into fashion, which might have inspired more clever brick recreations. The colors are dazzling and the visuals are inventive (drops of water and chicken nuggets are plastic smooth hoops), but the story’s throughline feels a tad rote (I did this which led to this and this and…). It offers some good life lessons for kids, with a great montage of Williams literally bouncing off the walls of the offices of stunned studio execs, but older folks may be confused by some similar design choices and the constant music biz “name drops”. This radical mesh of movie styles is a noble experiment, which could yield moviegoers a new slate of biopics that build on the cinematic potential shown in PIECE BY PIECE.
2.5 Out of 4
PIECE BY PIECE is now playing in theatres everywhere
