The Lego-animated Pharrell Doc is built like a brick house

If you’re tired of formulaic music biographies – well, almost all music biographies – Morgan Neville’s Piece by Piece is a breath of fresh air. Pharrell Williams, an artist with more No. 1 hits than Will Riker and Jack Ransom in a bar fight, has a story to tell about his childhood, his career and his creative process, and it’s not your typical rags-to-riches story. (He’s also a Star Trek fan, so if no one else gets the joke, at least he will.)

“Piece by Piece” is an animated documentary that isn’t a completely new concept, but it hasn’t been finished either. Morgan Neville, who won an Oscar for the music documentary “20 Feet from Stardom,” conducted extensive interviews with Pharrell Williams and his friends, family and artistic collaborators and then animated their story in the same style as the various “LEGO Movies.” Everyone loves so much. It’s a charming approach, even if it doubles as a giant toy commercial.

But when you tell Pharrell this, the LEGO aesthetic connects with him on a personal level. In his view, there is nothing new in this universe, so everything we create is made up of pre-existing parts. His music comes from his life experiences, big and small, and when he puts together a beat it takes physical form, a collection of LEGO bricks that pulse to the rhythm.

When it’s not about talking about LEGO in depth, “Piece by Piece” is about making it fun. Anecdotes about working at McDonalds and becoming addicted to Chicken McNuggets are amusing in themselves, but completely absurd when there is no LEGO brick small enough to create the illusion. So Pharrell just drags down 1×1 beige bricks that are practically the size of his head.

Pharrell also explains that he suffers from synesthesia, meaning he processes music visually, and that gives “Piece by Piece” an excuse to get trippy. Lots of colors, lots of strange images. However, it’s not too trippy. Neville’s animated documentary is set in the music industry, but is a family-friendly film, and that goes for even the most outlandish lyrics. And the scenes with Snoop Dogg reveal that the mysterious cloud of white smoke that follows him is just “PG spray” that the characters spray around themselves in the hopes that the adults will laugh and the kids won’t laugh too hard think about it.

“Piece by Piece” is designed specifically for children. It’s a relaxed picture book with inspiring moments and surprisingly muted drama. Pharrell’s life seems to have somehow averted many of the music industry’s most damaging clichés, so there are no subplots about drug abuse or even melodramatic shouting matches with his friends, family, and fellow musicians in the film. His biggest struggles listening to “Piece by Piece” were overextending himself with side projects and experiencing a period of creative burnout.

This lack of intensity isn’t a downside to Neville’s film, but rather a selling point. “Piece by Piece” isn’t about building Pharrell’s legend, but rather about the value of hard work and personal growth. These are some of life’s most important lessons, but movies often make them seem like they always arise from some external conflict, when often it’s just a matter of pulling yourself together, perfecting your craft, paying your debts, making time for your… Taking friends and family and so on don’t lose sight of your core values. Piece by Piece uses whimsy to make these experiences entertaining, whereas many biopics fall into the trap of turning reality into dramatic fiction.

So “Piece by Piece” is light, very light and yet quite impressive. Pharrell is a likeable guy and the rest of the interviewees are friendly and reserved. It amuses them that a man with such childlike exuberance and eccentric fashion choices has conquered the music world, but they are all very glad he did it, either because he’s a nice guy or because he made them a lot of money. Usually both. It’s reassuring to think that the music industry doesn’t chew you up and spit you out at least once in a while. It seems like Pharrell just nibbled on it a bit.

And of course there are the songs. There are so many songs. “Piece by Piece” doesn’t stop playing them all in their entirety, because it’s not Bernardo Bertolucci’s director’s cut of “1900” and we don’t have all the time in the world. If you only know Pharrell Williams from his hit single “Happy,” you’ll be amazed at how many classic songs he and his producing partner Chad Hugo were directly responsible for, or at least brought to fruition. It’s such an incredible, vast and high-quality body of work that it’s legitimately difficult to process, but if you hear Pharrell say it, it was his day job.

“Piece by Piece” doesn’t hit you like a bomb. It’s gentle, with good intentions and amusing gags. But it’s that fact – the fact that it’s a musical biography designed solely to comfort and inspire audiences – that makes it special. Morgan Neville may have made the latest in a long line of huge LEGO commercials, but he made one with real human decency and soul.