Piece by Piece Review

Pharrell Williams is a music sensation, working on hits like Happy, Get Lucky, and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 soundtracks. His career has been vast, covering many genres and years, and has become an icon of music so it was no surprise that he would eventually get a documentary about his career. Piece by Piece is a musical documentary about his rise to fame but with a twist: the entire film is animated to look like Lego. It is a creative direction to take a documentary in however, at the same time, it is less documentary and more Pharrell-produced propaganda about his amazing career.

Piece by Piece follows Pharrell from growing up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to making it big and working with music icons Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, and Kendrick Lamar. The Lego-based presentation is the best part of the entire affair, allowing the film to be vibrant with colour and be truly imaginative. The way his beats come together with Pharrell combining different blocks is wonderful. There are many more occasions where the film uses the fact it is Lego to amplify the narrative rather than being a creative gimmick and breathes unique life into documentary filmmaking.

However, my biggest issue with the film is the subject himself. The film, ironically, is all about the hits and Pharrell’s unique musical ability but it never really digs deeper into him as a person and the highs and lows of his career. When they discuss Blurred Lines, it is funny that even this film blurs the line between fact and fiction: according to the film, the song was just a hit and did numbers, forgetting all of the other aspects of the song, its much-discussed rape connotations and the Marvin Gaye copywrite lawsuit that they lost, which had an impact on the music industry.

In addition, I feel that their trying to hit a certain age rating greatly affects the narrative. While sometimes it works with Snoop Dogg’s PG-rated smoke fills the room and affects Pharrell, elsewhere it doesn’t, and in a way, it makes the film feel censored. There is a scene where they talk about how Pharrell used to sell nuggets out of the back of McDonalds, and when he sold the nuggets, he would get hungry. Some may find this comical, but I saw it as glazing the truth. So I could not help but think that if they changed these small aspects, what else would they be willing to change?

The reason why I’m so frustrated with Piece by Piece is that it is not a documentary about Pharrell Williams, it is a piece of media produced by him to showcase how incredible the music he worked on was. At times, it is a fun and creative film that can be a blast, other times it plays like propaganda for a man’s music that you will may – or may not- be blasting loud. For everyone else, and those who don’t know his work, there’s not much here to change your mind.

★★ 1/2

Closed the 2024 BFI London Film Festival on October 20th / In UK cinemas from November 8th / Pharrell Williams, Jay-Z, Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Gwen Stefani / Dir: Morgan Neville / Universal Pictures / PG