5 Reasons You'll Love The Lego Movie

Yes, kids will love seeing Batman, Green Lantern, Shaquille O'Neil, and the Millennium Falcon eat up the scenes, but I bet they don't remember the vintage minifigures — like the space man — that appear throughout the film. Many of the film's jokes will fly right over kids' heads, designed to entertain the parents who paid for the movie tickets in the first place The object that will destroy all human kind is called Kragle, but it is just a tube of Krazy Glue where some of the letters have been worn off! When a police minifigure is playing good cop and bad cop by turning his head around, he's made into a permanent bad cop when some nail polish remover is applied to one side of his head. It goes on from there.

As our Entertainment colleagues noted, the movie actually made me cry. Yes, an animated flick full of wild chases, bar brawls, and a fantasy land called Cloud Cuckoo Land strikes an emotional chord with the adults in the theater, reminding us that there are no rules about raising our kids, that everyone is special, they just have to find their "special-ness" — even if their ideas seem crazy at first.

These days, it goes without saying that animated flicks are full of recognizable celeb voices — half the fun is trying to figure out who's voicing which character. While your kids are focused on the actual moving minifigures, you'll be closing your eyes and trying to determine where you've heard those voices before. So we'll give you a little cheat sheet. Get your ears ready to distinguish the voices of Chris Pratt (Emmet), Will Ferrell (Lord Business/President Business), Elizabeth Banks (Wyldstyle), Will Arnett (Batman) — because, seriously, is there any better Batman voice out there? — Nick Offerman (Metal Beard), Alison Brie (Unikitty), Charlie Day (Benny), Liam Neeson (Bad Cop/Good Cop), and Morgan Freeman (Vitruvius).

Yes, every scene in the movie can actually be re-created with real Legos (though kids may be sorely disappointed when the Legos don't move on their own as the do in the flick), and Lego and Warner Brothers could have easily made this into a 90-minute ad for the building sets, but there's a real message in the film that goes beyond buying the newest 1,200-piece set and constructing a fighter jet according to the directions.

The film is filled with "cross contamination" where characters and pieces from various sets are integrated and are actually used to help reach the goal. In fact, when the characters try to stick to their original sets/eras, they fail at their missions. Through a twist at the end (I won't reveal it, but it is one directed to the parents in the audience), the message really comes home: Legos are meant for original play, not box play, and the company wants you to mix them up and play with them together.

It's cheesy, it's lyrics are ridiculously simple, and after sitting through the movie, you won't be able to get the movie's theme song, "Everything Is Awesome," out of your head. The song is introduced in the film's opening sequence and by the time it's over, your foot will be tapping to the tune. Don't worry though, you'll hear it throughout the flick. With motivational lyrics like "Everything is awesome, everything is cool when you’re part of a team," kids are hearing a good message, but parents will "get" that the song's producers are poking fun at uniformity throughout the song (and the film itself). I dare you to walk out of the theater not humming the tune.