{"id":6349,"date":"2024-10-19T21:38:11","date_gmt":"2024-10-20T01:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6349"},"modified":"2024-11-02T21:56:24","modified_gmt":"2024-11-03T01:56:24","slug":"piece-by-piece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/19\/piece-by-piece\/","title":{"rendered":"Piece by Piece"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Piece by Piece<\/strong> (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Documentary-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, some suggestive material, thematic elements)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Morgan Neville\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Morgan Neville, Jason Zeldes, Aaron Wickenden and Oscar Vazquez\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Michael Andrews\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 11, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Pharrell Williams, Morgan Neville, Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Pusha T, Missy Elliott, Nigo, Teddy Riley, N.O.R.E..<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Pharrell Williams always does it his way. The music he makes and produces has a sound all its own. When it came time to tell his life story, he didn\u2019t want to do a traditional biopic with some name actor playing him. Instead, he made a Lego movie that plays more like a musical documentary than a standard movie. For the most part, it works.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom), Piece by Piece<\/strong> has Lego-Williams relating his life story to Lego-Neville. The filmmaker prompts the rapper\/musician\/producer to imagine himself as a sea creature swimming through the ocean towards Roman god of the sea Neptune. It takes us to Virginia Beach where Pharrell\u2019s story begins. He grew up in the Atlantis projects with his parents who encouraged him to reach for his dreams. He had a special fondness for music. When he listened to it, he saw colors swirling around. He thought all black kids did.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Pharrell takes us through his life from his association with Teddy Riley\u2019s Future Records to his success with the hit song \u201cHappy\u201d to now. We get to see his beginnings as a member of The Neptunes, a group he formed with school friends Chad Hugo (who he describes as a \u201cmusical savant\u201d) and skateboarder Shay Haley. He would go onto produce songs for the likes of Gwen Stefani, Justin Timberlake and Pusha T. We hear from these folks as well as Missy Elliott (another childhood friend), Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Piece by Piece<\/strong> follows a familiar rise-and-fall-and-rise again trajectory. Pharrell finds some early success with his original beats, but gets sidetracked when records execs unwisely advise him to go for a more conventional sound. It also shows us a personal side of its subject in depicting his close relationship with his grandmother who often took him to church and meeting the girl who would eventually become his wife after he deals with some commitment issues.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I wasn\u2019t sure if I\u2019d go to see Piece by Piece<\/strong>. I\u2019m not a big fan of Pharrell (although I do love \u201cHappy). The only Lego movie I\u2019ve liked is the first one. I didn\u2019t get to see it last weekend because I was working on getting my website back up. To be honest, I wasn\u2019t all that broken up about skipping it. I had a change of heart during the week. I decided to check it out after all. I\u2019m kind of glad I did. It\u2019s not perfect by any means, but it\u2019s still pretty good.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ve never seen a documentary presented this way. It\u2019s different. Surprisingly, it works. Visually, the movie held my attention. It\u2019s a colorful and lively piece with some pretty good music. The problem is in what it doesn\u2019t show. I would have liked to see more of Pharrell\u2019s creative process. We see a little bit of it, but he talks about it more than he shows it. It\u2019s a missed opportunity. Animation is an ideal way to show art and creativity.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I guess my biggest question about Piece by Piece<\/strong> is who it\u2019s for. It\u2019s PG for a couple of uses of s***. It touches on the Black Lives Matter movement, but depicts none of the violence. None of this is especially objectionable. I think it\u2019s safe to bring the kids, but would they be interested? It\u2019s a documentary with a lot of talking. Childless adults will likely skip it because it\u2019s a Lego movie. I really don\u2019t know what audience Neville is going for here. Given its tepid opening weekend take of just $3.8M, it would appear nobody is all that interested. It was a risky project. I\u2019d expect nothing less from Pharrell.<\/p>\n

\u00a0So what do I think of Piece by Piece<\/strong>? It\u2019s pretty good. It\u2019s not exactly boring. However, it doesn\u2019t run out of steam as it gets closer to the end. It does have some genuinely touching moments like the world\u2019s reaction to \u201cHappy\u201d and all the love pouring from the videos on social media. Pharrell\u2019s relationship with his grandmother is sweet; I wish he had gone into it more. It has some flaws, but Piece by Piece<\/strong> is nonetheless an interesting experiment in form. It\u2019s too bad it falls short in the content department.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Piece by Piece (2024)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Documentary-Comedy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 93 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (language, some suggestive material, thematic elements)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Morgan Neville\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Morgan Neville, Jason Zeldes, Aaron Wickenden and Oscar Vazquez\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Michael Andrews\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: October 11, 2024 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Pharrell Williams, Morgan Neville, Gwen Stefani, Kendrick Lamar, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6412,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Piece-by-Piece-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C918&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6349"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6414,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6349\/revisions\/6414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}