‘Piece by Piece’ Turns Pharrell Williams’ Journey as an Artist Into Quirky Lego Entertainment

Alci Rengifo

For those who live outside of the lives of famous artists, there is an enduring fascination with how they found success. Pharrell Williams is certainly an immense talent, whose name graces the credits of some of the biggest music hits of his time. Songwriter, solo artist, rapper, producer, fashion designer, the list goes on. Aside from such impressive feats, for now there is not much else to the story. “Piece by Piece” briskly covers the highlights of the musician’s journey with the added innovation of telling it entirely through Lego animation. Director Morgan Neville has made a documentary that will certainly grab more attention for its approach than for any major revelations about the subject.

Despite the playful visual technique, “Piece by Piece” tells Pharrell’s story in a very basic, linear form. The musician narrates his early days in Virginia Beach, Virginia, discovering a love for music in childhood. Like so many artists, he remembers being a space case in school. At Princess Anne High School his circle of friends include future big names like Pusha T, Missy Elliot, and Timbaland, who appear on camera through their Lego avatars. More immediately consequential for Pharrell’s future is the friendship he strikes with Chad Hugo and Shay Haley, with whom he would form the Neptunes. The name would be inspired by a big statue of Neptune on the boardwalk of Virginia Beach. As Pharrell tells it, he was a music sponge, gravitating to R&B but also playing around with hip-hop, pop, dance, rock and sounds early listeners would find hard to categorize. Pharrell’s first big break would happen by luck when maverick producer Teddy Riley arrives in town and opens a studio right next to his high school.

 From there, “Piece by Piece” is a pretty standard biopic. Perhaps realizing Pharrell had full oversight of the production (and apparently being the one who suggested the Lego format in the first place), Neville never digs too deep. His best documentaries, such as “Best of Enemies,” about the Gore Vidal and William Buckley TV debates, or “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” an insightful portrait of Fred Rogers, feel like revelations about famous public figures. “Piece by Piece” quickly runs through the highlights of Pharrell’s career with a breezy, feel-good attitude. It’s the small details that prove entertaining. Pharrell remembers learning studio etiquette the hard way when he kept talking out of place or intruding on Riley’s recording sessions. Once he gets a chance to show what he’s made of on the mic, Riley runs with his contributions for Wreckx-n-Effect’s “Rump Shaker.”

Keep in mind, all of this is shown in Lego format. Timbaland and Missy Elliot’s Lego versions mention a popular saying about Virginia Beach having something in the water, due to all the talent the place produces, as they hold giant water flasks. Sequences can be animated to bring home certain ideas, like how by the early 2000s, the Neptunes seemed to be producing and writing for everyone, so we get a moment where artists and bands pass by in an assembly line. At times the format can also feel like it’s robbing us of a documentary’s capacity to be a genuine chronicle. Pharrell plays with his son before sitting down to talk, and we wish this was real footage not a Lego Williams walking around a Lego house. The work is definitely impressive. Hilarious comedy also takes place when Snoop Dogg remembers meeting Pharrell, captured in a marijuana smoke-filled scene where Snoop literally becomes a dog. He sounds the most endearing out of the interviewed artists, mentioning how Pharrell was the first songwriter to truly bring out his lighter, fun side with the hit “Drop It Like It’s Hot.”

We learn more about the backstories of hit songs than about Pharrell himself. In a way you can say the documentary is letting the music do the talking. His capacity to crisscross genres is captured in Gwen Stefani’s commentary about No Doubt being taken off guard by Pharrell’s presentation of “Hella Good.” She also has to step aside to tell the gardeners to stop working in the background. Another moment we wish wasn’t in Lego. Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake and others describe working with Pharrell and Chad Hugo, described as the brain behind the Neptune’s trademark electronic elements, with constant similarities. What they all have in common is being attracted to the Neptunes sound because it sounded so different and experimental. Jay-Z also describes watching out for Pharrell as if he were a little brother, since he wasn’t necessarily an artist shaped by the street like others in the hip-hop circles they operated in.

Were there demons or a downfall? Pharrell was lucky to have a supportive family. His grandmother instantly noticed his potential and bought him his first snare drum. As “Piece by Piece” tells it, Pharrell’s one downturn happened when he overstretched himself writing hits and jumping into ventures involving fashion and even drinks. His songwriting became sloppy when it became consumed by desires to top the charts, grab larger audiences and not let inspiration flow naturally. As the musician tells it, his greatest flaw is being too trusting. Corporate suits, personified by Lego men in suits, began dictating the trajectory of his career. Is this the whole story? Do Pharrell’s inner contradictions really boil down to just being too nice? Even his wife, Helen Lasichanh, makes their relationship sound like something out of a young adult novel. He met her at a party, wasn’t ready to commit, waited a while, came to her window and promised real devotion. Maybe we are too accustomed to stories of talented artists spiraling into self-destruction and excess. 

Pharrell’s salvation from a rut was writing the global hit “Happy” for the animated movie “Despicable Me 2.” The details are not particularly exciting and we again suspect this is why Neville agreed to the Lego format. It is visually cheerful to watch Lego versions of Daft Punk jamming with Lego Pharrell to “Get Lucky” or Virginia Beach becoming a Lego wonderland. Dramatic heft is attempted with nighttime shots of Pharrell driving around plastic trees in a sports car, thinking about the influence of his grandmother as he tries to figure out his next road in life. Such a moment can’t be done in a standard documentary. At 51, Pharrell is still young enough to stay active. As a result, “Piece by Piece” also feels like it is the recap of a life being made a bit too early. It is a career worth looking over, only because several of the songs Pharrell and his collaborators put together have more recently dominated our collective pop consciousness. Told as a Lego hallucination, it is a fun playlist to get lost in.

“Piece by Piece” releases Oct. 11 in theaters nationwide.