Before I begin. The initial reviews seemed to indicate the movie was on par with the first movie. Now having been in theaters for about two weeks now, Metacritic has had plenty of time to rack up reviews from publications and the public. Currently the film is rated at 65 out of 100 by the critiques versus 83 for the original. If your inclined to use numerical comparisons to determine overall quality, I feel that Metacritic accurately sums up what I think of the first compared to the newest film.

Before you go any further, I will be talking about some details that could be considered spoilers. While I am not going into depth on the details, reading any further may spoil part of the presentation of the movies.

Both films take place mostly from the perspectives of the Minifigure characters. In the first, it is eventually disclosed to the viewers that the majority of the movie is a reflection of a child’s relationship to his father and his fascination with the world his dad has built out of the bricks in their basement. The minifigure’s relation to this matter is a bit more subtle until this is revealed in full, although it plays a major part in the storytelling.

Relics occasionally pop up through the movie that hint at the human world around them that the plastic characters are mostly unable to perceive. In the live action scenes towards the end of the first movie, the father becomes fascinated with what his son has built despite the fact that his son did so without his permission. He decides to give his son and young daughter reign over his LEGO collection, hoping to strenghten his relationship with his son and better experience the world his son has created. This leads directly into the sequel.

“The LEGO Movie 2, The Second Part” begins almost immediately where the first let off. The final scenes of the first movie become the beginning of the sequel. Shortly afterwards the movie jumps ahead in time several years. This time, there is no subtlety that the events the cast are experiencing are a reflection of the relationship of two siblings in some kind of conflict. The minifigures are once again only vaguely aware of the human influence, with most of the conflict being represented by characters created by one sibling or the other. Occasional glimpses of the live action cast depict some of the events the conflict from the human side.

Most of the original cast is in the movie, and even a number of side characters make a return to demonstrate how the conflict has or hasn’t really changed them. The sequel assumes you’ve seen the first, and hardly takes time to explain who they are. This might leave some confused if they missed the first movie, although it is somewhat refreshing not to have each character re-introduced. You either know who they are already or your out of the loop until you watch the first. One scene just before the credits roll can only truly be appreciated if you’ve seen the first in the series, and I daresay it makes watching the first to catch up entirely worthwhile.

The sequel carries over much of the the humor from the first, including but not limited to the sound effects made by human actors, and scenes of space ships on strings. Much of the same kind of storytelling is going on throughout the film as they transition from one unlikely scene to the next. The film tries to represent a wider range of building elements and minifigure types, taking advantage of the LEGO Duplo and Friends characters that would have been out of place even in the first movie. In more than one scene, three different kinds of Wonder Woman are on screen to portray the imagination and evolution of the younger sibling at work.