The Lego Movie

One rule governed the 2014 animation by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller: freeze any frame and what you see had to be buildable by hand from real pieces. Water, fire, smoke and explosions are all made of bricks, which turns a hard constraint into the comic engine. The production modelled 3,863,484 individual bricks, some reused across scenes, and rebuilding the whole film physically would take 15,080,330 pieces. More than three hundred and fifty artists spent over two years on it. It was rendered in a computer but imitates stop motion. Character rigs were held to the articulation a real minifigure allows, and fast movement uses a trailing shape assembled from bricks instead of blur. The end titles are the exception and were animated for real, from over sixty thousand physical pieces, some shots needing a hundred bricks moved by hand per frame. The third act reframe gives every earlier gag a purpose, so what plays as noise the first time reads as setup the second. The Academy nominated its song and left the film out of the animated feature category. A good fit if you enjoy noticing that even the explosions are assembled from studs. Not for you if you need pauses, or sit beside a small child who does, since the gag rate never drops.