Bio pics thus far generally come from generations where the musician or band is of an era past. ‘Get On Up’, ‘Walk The Line’, or ‘Ray’ are incredible films depicting the struggles of the artists creating the music that will never leave the record books. ‘Piece By Piece’ featuring the rise of Pharrell Williams is a different beast entirely because it’s from a musician who is STILL being inspired to this day, and that musical creators all over earth are receiving inspiration from currently. If you happen to be a singer, rapper, producer, DJ, or even a recording studio engineer, you may throw yourself head first into the first building with a recording set up after seeing this. The inspirational value is unprecedented.
An interesting note about the musical selection is that as time-spanning as it is, there are a few songs that are played for nostalgia, but never really given a back story. (‘Blurred Lines’ from Robin Thicke for example IS played, but is not really mentioned past that). There are a myriad of artists who give their input on their time spent with Pharrell, and the impact he had on their careers, including some surprising (lego) faces thrown into the fray quite early on. Missy Elliot, Timbaland, and Pusha-T grew up alongside The Neptunes. Working collaborations between them seems almost expected now a days, but its interesting to know that they were in the same social circles from such a young age.
Another interesting perspective that the film shines a light on is that failure breeds success. A quote from the movie states “Don’t make a record for this or for that, MAKE IT, and let the chips fall where they may”. Pharrell wanted desperately to work with PRINCE, and created a record for him that Prince shelved before he passed away. The record resurfaced years later in a collaboration between Pharrell and Jay-Z that people wouldn’t have expected was originally for Prince, BUT once you hear it, you’ll easily be able to tell that it was for him. Being transported through the decades long musical catalog of Pharrell and the Neptunes isn’t the only great piece of the movie. The film takes a look in on things from the McDonalds jingle that Pharrell created for them… (decades after being fired for stealing chicken nuggets for his friends) all the way down to his Billionare Boys Club clothing collection.
This isn’t a fanboy review though, the film does struggle to fall into place in a few parts, BBC being one of them. The clothing on lego characters doesn’t really represent the unique styling of the clothes in their full glory, and when it comes to the hardships of any artist, or the depressing 2nd act that all biopics depict, this one just has a bit of a “yeah, I was depressed for a bit”-shrug attitude before times turn out to be well again. The trials and tribulations are simply touched on and moved past in such a way that seems as if people just had the song “Happy” in their heads the entire time. Speaking of happy, there’s great use of the color yellow when that song and its creation are explored. (Yellow being a color that is meant to invoke happiness in the viewer.)
“You can’t have your ear to the streets when your head is in the clouds.”, “If a man can walk on the moon, we can make it out of the projects.”, and “You are no longer learning if you know it all.” are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to introspective quotes from Pharrell that serve to provide the film with depth. We all knew from the trailers that this was the be a cavalcade of cameos, but the one that surprise us the most was OPRAH. There was a lego representation of Oprah getting Pharrell to cry, which was just something you wouldn’t expect to see in a major motion picture. But that aside, it is well worth seeing.
You can’t have a film as unique as this without the career as bountiful as Pharrells to back it up. Simply recreating a documentary with lego people would NEVER WORK in any other situation besides this, and that in it self as unique as the person it’s about. In the pre-screening that we viewed this, it was media only, and a woman seemingly brought her two kids to see what she thought was a child’s film, however there is a fair amount of swearing from some artists, and a fair amount of drinking (as is to be expected from any documentary style film). Another nice note (speaking of style) is that there are visual representations of memories, or past events that didn’t require actors or “young versions of” characters, since everything was lego, and that made the story flow swiftly from story to story.
All in all, “Piece By Piece” is an interesting and eye opening adventure into the backstory of an artist who simply did his thing to earn his stripes. It doesn’t do enough to impress the hardships that were involved in getting to where Pharrell Williams is today, but MAYBE there weren’t many. If that’s true then his life has truly been as monumental as this film is. It is very well worth a look if you are a musical industry aficionado or not.
P.S. There, for SOME odd reason, is a Lego version of the trailer for the new film ‘Wicked’ in front of ‘Piece By Piece’. We don’t know why…. but someone spent their time on that.