Raise your hand if you thought making yet another movie based on a children’s toy was a terrible idea. And keep it up if The Lego Movie’s trailers did nothing to convince you otherwise that a feature-length movie starring those dastardly little plastic land mines would end up with the same disastrous fate as so many other game-to-movie conversions… we’re looking at you, Battleship. Put your hands down. We were wrong.

Other than convincing a wary movie-going public to give the genre another try, the biggest challenge the makers of The Lego Movie faced was to create an engaging movie that doesn’t play like a feature-length commercial for the LEGO Corporation. While sales of Lego bricks will undoubtedly skyrocket in the wake of the film’s release (boosted by the company’s nauseatingly obtrusive store-front displays), selling product is not the film’s primary intent. In fact, its message of innovation, creativity, and the importance of change is actually quite rebellious in spirit, encouraging young kids to defy conformity by ignoring the instruction sheets that accompany Lego sets and building whatever suits their fancy.

The film’s visuals, some of the most immersive you’ll see in any animated film, are computer generated but resemble stop-motion animation. And true to the building block’s interlocking form, everything you see on the screen is rendered with the signature pixelated structure, as if it could have been assembled with actual  Lego blocks. It was important to director Phil Lord and Christopher Miller to give the film an accessible hand-made look that rings true to the do-it-yourself aesthetic of Lego construction. Just one more in the long list of brilliant choices by the makers of The Lego Movie.

There are two kinds of Lego builders: those who follow instructions on the package, build a perfectly erected kit that looks exactly like the image on the box, before putting the creation on the shelf to never be moved again; then there are those content to dig into the middle of a pile of mismatched bricks and construct a conglomeration born from their own imagination before destroying it in a heap of acrylic destruction. It’s from these two different approaches that The Lego Movie builds its wonderful premise, which is really about tapping into creativity and the idea that everyone is special in their own unique way.

Yellow-faced, coverall-clad construction worker Emmet (voiced by Chris Pratt) is of the former type. He’s an ordinary rules-following, perfectly average Lego minifigure content to live exactly by the instruction manual provided by President Business (Will Ferrell), aka Lord Business, an uptight CEO who has a hard time balancing his thirst for world domination with micro-managing his own life. President Business likes a corporate world where everything is regimented and under constant surveillance. Emmet is just fine with that.

Emmet soon meets the lovely Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) who he discovers is looking for the one thing that -- as told by prophecy in the form of white-bearded Vesuvius (Morgan Freeman) -- can block Lord Business’s evil plan to dominate the world: The Piece of Resistance. So, when that piece mysteriously turns up on Emmet’s back, the guy who was perfectly content to simply blend in suddenly becomes The Special, the most important minifigure in the Lego universe.

On its surface, the story being told in The Lego Movie is an unassumingly delightful little cross-genre tale that entertains the kiddos with an oddly diverse blend of Transformers action, superhero characters, and Pixar visuals. In fact, some of the scenes even feel cobbled together, just like a Lego creation. But there’s a genius at work beneath the surface which slowly begins to reveal itself before crescendoing into one of the most extraordinarily heartwarming climaxes we’ve seen in quite some time. Plenty of Lego spoofs get thrown around, and the film’s message of creativity and independent thought -- though omnipresent -- never comes off as preachy or overbearing.

Though none of the jokes are of the particularly belly-aching variety, there are a lot of them. And they come at such a blistering pace, a second viewing is certainly in order to catch all the witty banter and amusing hijinks that slipped by the first time. And to experience again that wonderfully impassioned zenith where eye-popping visuals soon give way to emotional depth and wondrous delight. Watch out Pixar! Warner Animation Group is hot on your heels.

(Released by Warner Bros. and rated “PG” for mild action and rude behavior.)

Review also posted at www.franksreelreviews.com.