‘Piece by Piece’ Turns Pharrell Williams’ Life Into a Toy Story. Literally.
Breaking into the music business, crafting insanely addictive earworm hits, recognizing genre boundaries, starting a streetwear fashion line, wearing properly sized ranger hats — Pharrell Williams has never done anything by the book. The kid from Virginia Beach, Virginia, had always felt like someone who saw (and heard) the world differently than his peers. As a youngster growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, that “he’s so… unusual” tag marked him as a bit of a misfit. By the time Pharrell started creating oft-kilter beats as half of the molten-hot production duo the Neptunes in the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, it had gone from bug to feature. He still occupies a singular place in modern pop music. A documentary was inevitable.
So maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise when the guy who helped give us “Happy,” “Get Lucky,” and much of the soundtrack of the 21st century suggested that his cinematic Boswell, a.k.a. filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, the recent two-part Steve Martin doc), do something a little unique. Life, in the artist’s estimation, is kind of a like a LEGO set, “where you can put things together however you want.” So why not recount his rise from humble origins to hitmaker with actual LEGOs? It’s an absolutely ridiculous idea to propose, unless you’re Williams, in which case it’s just another potential win in a career full of proven left-field successes. People love LEGO Batman! And not all LEGO superheroes wear capes!
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Whether this concept of turning Williams’ life story into a literal toy story was the move or not is debatable; we’d place it right at the midpoint between gimmick and stroke of genius. But you can’t accuse Piece by Piece of looking like another straight-off-the-assembly-line music doc, even if it hits all the typical beats of one. And given the way Williams describes his creative process, it’s an ideal way to translate what’s going on in his head to what you see onscreen. The singer-songwriter-producer-fashionista-[fill in the blank] has a neurological condition known as synesthesia, which allows him to experience music as a panoply of colors. He’s “seeing” the melodies and polyrhythms, choruses and hooks of a song in bright bursts that ebb, flow, and occasionally explode into textural rainbows. Williams could tell you how he came up with the building blocks of Kelis’s club-rocking playground taunt “Milkshake,” or the carhorn-like symphony that characterizes Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass.” Instead, he’ll show you what he’s working with, translated as a flashing lights and eye-searing hues.
You still get the rock-doc basics, mind you: Williams’ youth in the suburban neighborhood that he dubs “Atlantis,” buoyed by his parents’ encouragement, big dreams and his love of music; meeting future Neptunes co-founder Chad Hugo in band class; doing grunt work for Teddy Riley when the New Jack Swing bigwig improbably sets up shop in Virginia Beach, then eventually writing Riley’s verse for Wreckx-N-Effect’s “Rump Shaker”; the early rejections; the breakthrough hits; the Golden Era, when everything Williams and Hugo touched turned to platinum; the ego trip preceding the fall; the humility before the phoenix-like rebirth; the realization that family, friends, love, etc. is what really matters. It’s a tale of a kid who dreams about making music on a grand scale with a side hustle of revolutionizing several other worlds in the process, and whose dreams eventually come true.
It’s just that you’re getting all of this via some-assembly-required landscapes and tiny, chunky figures who tell you they were blown away by hearing a Neptunes track, then boom! You see their removable round head pop off and roll around before being put back into place. Far be it from us to downplay the thrill of, say, seeing the “Rump Shaker” music video totally redone with LEGOs, or from witnessing a LEGO Jay-Z testify that “not a drip of street was in Pharrell.” Or from hearing one Neptunes-produced tune or solo Pharrell joint play one after the other, with each catchy hook and synthy bloop and bleep bleed into each other as a cosmic onslaught of colors gives you a second-hand sugar rush. How many opportunities do you get to answer he question, “What would Kendrick Lamar look like as a LEGO dude?,” much less hear Williams give you a first-person account of making history in the studio?
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. Occasionally, they make a rare misstep rose. The period in which Pharrell’s Midas touch goes M.I.A., and he loses his way by trying to manufacture prefab types of songs, is represented via a trio of ghoulish, gray-suited industry types that stand in for every temptation dotting his path. It’s such a vague, whimsical explanation for what happened during his lowest post-superstardom creative point that it does a disservice to his personal struggle, as well as the professional second wind that gives us his Daft Punk collaboration, his Despicable Me soundtrack contribution and a whole lot of dancing feet. Things sucked, but never mind the particulars. Check out these nifty LEGOs!
Such things may be keeping in line with Piece by Piece‘s overall accentuate-the-positive vibe, which complements the sunny bounce of much of Williams music and allows him to drop a lot of bumper-sticker-worthy platitudes like they’re hot. A lot of self-reflection lies behind those shiny, happy tunes, and occasionally you get a few moments of the real peeking through the playtime mode. Otherwise, when it comes to looking back and moving forward, Williams says “take it [all] apart brick by brick, then put it back together.” In this case, he’s being extremely literal.
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