Piece By Piece
Focus Features | Release Date: October 11, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
63
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 32 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
13
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
We Got This CoveredCharlotte SimmonsOct 15, 2024
Piece by Piece, much like its decorated subject, blows right past refusing to play by the rules and straight up doesn't acknowledge them, and it's all the best for it. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinNov 7, 2024
Piece by Piece is a razor-sharp pronouncement on the nature of stardom in 2024. That you leave the cinema wanting to buy toys and records isn’t simply the idea of the story: it’s the moral. Read full review
80
Time OutPhil de SemlyenNov 7, 2024
Most of all, it’s a colourful journey lit up with great tunes and a deep love of music – an ingenious, infectious new spin on the music doc. Read full review
80
NMEJames MottramNov 1, 2024
Neville’s film is so forward-thinking, it’s easy to forgive the more superficial aspects of the production. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithOct 10, 2024
Borrowing the look of The Lego Movie, Piece by Piece is as bouncy and playful as a room full of rambunctious toddlers. Read full review
80
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Aparita BhandariOct 10, 2024
It’s perfect popcorn fare: the story of a creative genius against the playfulness of a Lego landscape mixed with a boppy tune. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKatie WalshOct 10, 2024
Piece by Piece is ultimately a surprisingly moving biography, and a resonant reminder of Williams’ outsize cultural footprint. The Lego format doesn’t cheapen the power of Neville’s message, but rather reflects the quirky, outside-the-box thinking of the artist himself, who has always marched to the beat of his own drum, steering the cultural ship according to his unique point of view. Read full review
80
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiOct 9, 2024
Morgan Neville may have made the latest in a long line of giant LEGO commercials, but he’s made one with real human decency and soul. Read full review
80
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaSep 19, 2024
While its flaws are rooted in what it avoids, its marriage of topic and form yields a blast of positivity in a way that perfectly suits its withholding subject, granting his interviews the kind of depth and creativity embodied by his music. While it avoids all thorny entanglements, it looks good and feels great, like any LEGO movie should. Read full review
80
ColliderJason GorberSep 12, 2024
It’s a film that’s serious about play, and humble about the need for joy. Piece by Piece is, quite simply, bricktacularly brilliant. Read full review
80
The GuardianRadheyan SimonpillaiSep 9, 2024
Pharrell’s rags-to-riches story is a familiar tale re-energised not just with his unique sound but the basic decision to animate his life so that it can thrive with his imagination and hit so many visual grace notes. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreOct 11, 2024
Sure, it’s a gimmick. But it’s playful, it works and suits this material to a T. Read full review
75
Washington PostTy BurrOct 10, 2024
The movie serves as product placement for a brand of toys but also as a form of creative brick-olage, one that reflects a modern music producer’s ability to weave small units of musical noise into an epic canvas that gets the whole world up offa that thing. Read full review
75
Chicago TribuneAdam GrahamOct 10, 2024
An at-times deliriously entertaining biopic. Read full review
75
The Associated PressMark KennedyOct 7, 2024
It is deep and surreal and often adorable. Is it high concept or low? Like Williams, it’s a bit of both. Read full review
70
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiOct 10, 2024
What the documentary lacks in depth it makes up for with style, creativity, and entertainment value. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyMaureen Lee LenkerAug 31, 2024
There are glimmers of insight here, often in the brighter moments (for instance, the sweet story of how Pharrell devised his massive hit, "Happy," and the emotional response triggered by its success). But despite touting an inventive concept, the whole thing remains fairly surface level. Read full review
67
IndieWireCaleb HammondAug 31, 2024
Piece by Piece is ultimately surface-level entertainment, a light, visually-inventive ride without much to offer its audiences beyond a reaffirmation on the values of hard work and believing in one’s self. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonOct 9, 2024
The lack of a deeper dive into its subject’s trials and tribulations is the biggest flaw of “Piece by Piece.” While the concept of making a documentary with Legos is an intriguing one, and it’s well executed, the film itself is a very shallow look at its subject. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeNov 11, 2024
It’s a fun watch, and the technique allows film-maker Morgan Neville to visually represent Williams’s form of synaesthesia, which turns music into colours, and to explore his musical process in a suitably playful and creative manner. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeNov 7, 2024
Many will roll their eyes when Williams is praised for supposedly ground-breaking collaboration with luxury brands. But the real problem with this tolerably diverting film is that he isn’t really that interesting. Read full review
60
EmpireJohn NugentNov 6, 2024
Piece By Piece’s very existence is baffling, and the Lego of it all is never entirely justified, but as an unconventional documentary of a maverick musician, it works — just about. Read full review
60
VarietyPeter DebrugeOct 10, 2024
Paradoxically, the Lego approach gives the film a far more imaginative visual range than traditional documentaries, even as it robs us of the thing we most want to see: human faces. Read full review
60
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonOct 10, 2024
Piece By Piece sidesteps feeling rote by doing something that seems, frankly, bizarre. That it works at all is a product of the quirky form fitting the subject well. It’s chaotic, sure. But that’s the fun of it. Read full review
60
Rolling StoneDavid FearOct 9, 2024
Sometimes all of these little plastic avatars are a needless distraction from what is a compelling origin story by any measure. Other times, the LEGO-ification of it all provides a welcome distraction from some fairly cut-and-dried Music Documentary 101 business, with Piece by Piece putting a formally unique spin on a very familiar, if slightly incomplete arc. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeAug 30, 2024
While inventive, Neville’s doc can’t quite avoid the trappings of the celebrity-produced biopic, and is expectedly marked by typical hagiographic evasiveness. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerOct 10, 2024
Rather than blazing a new trail for Lego cartoons, this may be the first one to feel like it’s adhering too closely to its instruction booklet. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerOct 10, 2024
Taken on its own fluff piece terms, Piece by Piece is an interesting sprint through three decades of cultural relevance and relatively scandal-free living. If Pharrell’s happy, then it seems we have to be too. Read full review
50
Screen DailyTim GriersonOct 10, 2024
For all its breezy animation, the film can’t match the vividness of its subject. Read full review
50
RogerEbert.comRobert DanielsSep 3, 2024
Williams’ playful, genre-bending music that mixes post-soul cool with skater sensibilities is probably more than a live-action narrative could contain. In the hands of director Morgan Neville, however, the story of Williams’ life lacks specificity and substance. Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawNov 7, 2024
The Lego Pharrell is an intriguing, absurdist high concept, but not nearly as interesting as the real thing. Read full review
40
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreOct 11, 2024
What’s obvious after a few minutes of Piece by Piece is that the movie isn’t rendered the way it is because of some profound thematic ties between its subject’s life and the plastic construction set, but because the Lego is an attempt to inject something of interest into what is, even by the pre-chewed standards of authorized celeb docs, textureless pablum. Read full review
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