Piece by Piece Proves That More Musical Biopics Should Be Animated

When I first heard about Pharrell Williams’s Piece by Piece, it mostly seemed like an amusing novelty. A traditional musical biopic elevated by the medium of LEGO and not much else. However, after seeing the film, I realized that it was much more than simply telling the same kind of story in a new way; rather, using a new medium to change how we tell these stories.

For too long, musical biopics have felt stale and monotonous, utilizing tired tropes to tell similar stories that often fail to capture the spirit and sometimes the facts themselves of a given artist to fit in a specific box. Meanwhile, Piece by Piece not only stays true to Pharrell Williams’ actual story but does so in a way that’s far more visually stimulating and creatively ambitious than a live-action version of this story would be.

Why Most Musical Biopics Fall Flat

Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody

At this point, musical biopics have honed their traditional narrative formula down to a science. The musician starts from humble beginnings, has a meteoric rise to fame, crashes and burns due to some horrible failure that may or may not involve drug abuse, and finally ends the movie triumphantly, returning to the stage more successful than ever.

While this structure isn’t inherently bad, its dominance amidst this subgenre has made basically every new musical biopic feel tiring. We know the steps so well that it feels rote and often inauthentic, especially given how many otherwise talented actors are reduced to basic melodrama when portraying these musicians.

And both audiences and filmmakers have begun to take notice. Despite multiple Oscar wins and a nearly billion-dollar box office return, Bohemian Rhapsody was heavily criticized for taking too many creative liberties with Freddie Mercury’s story in service of this formula. And more recently, the Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black severely underperformed at the box office, making only $50 million on a $30 million budget before marketing. Additionally, films like Walk Hard and Weird: The Al Yankovic Story have brutally mocked these tropes to great success precisely because of how recognizable and overused they’ve become.

What Piece By Piece Brings To The Table

A still from Piece by Piece | The Lego Group

In fairness, it’s not as though Piece By Piece doesn’t follow this narrative arc to some degree. The film opens with him growing up in Virginia Beach and continues through his rise as a producer and solo artist before he hits a massive creative slump, only to rise again stronger than ever thanks to mega-hits like “Happy.” But it feels less tired here for two reasons.

One, unlike Bohemian Rhapsody or Back to Black, there are no actors portraying the artists. Pharrell and his various friends, family, and colleagues voice their LEGO counterparts, and the story is told as a visualization of a series of interviews rather than a scripted narrative. This, ironically enough, makes things feel more naturalistic and allows the typical narrative beats to be more believable.

The other key difference is, of course, the animation. Piece By Piece portrays not just its characters but also buildings, vehicles, and even environmental elements entirely out of LEGO bricks. Although the film uses CG animation, the frame rate is slowed down compared to other CG films to emulate the stop-motion look of the LEGO shorts that rose to prominence in the early 2000s.

The animated approach ends up creating the perfect compromise between the authenticity of a documentary and the narrative satisfaction of a traditional biopic. A traditional documentary couldn’t fully depict Pharrell’s childhood because there’s no footage of it, and a live-action biopic would have to construct an actor-driven narrative around that time period that would likely feel artificial.

But with animation, combined with the aforementioned interviews, you can create an authentic portrayal of those environments and moments in time without necessarily needing it to be or even feel like a one-to-one recreation of such. Characters can address the audience directly at key moments in the story, and major realizations or moments of internal crisis are portrayed as bombastic visual set pieces that give us more direct insight into the thought process and mentality of a given artist, which is, at least in theory, the whole point of a biopic.

One of the most clever ways Piece By Piece utilizes animation is in its depiction of synesthesia, a perceptual condition that affects how the five senses interact with each other and, in the case of Pharrell Williams, allows him to see specific colors when listening to music. This idea is basically impossible to depict in live-action but is translated here as LEGO Pharrell pulling out colorful, translucent bricks that represent specific tracks. It’s simple, elegant, easy to understand, and only works because it’s depicted through animation.

What Other Musical Biopics Could Do To Be More Like Piece By Piece

Young Pharrell Williams in Piece by Piece

Piece By Piece has already earned itself a largely positive critical reception, an “A” CinemaScore, and while its box office may not reach the heights of the over $450 million worldwide achieved by the original LEGO Movie back in 2014, its meager $16 million price tag and positive word-of-mouth should be more than enough to give it a relatively successful run.

So, what does this mean for future musical biopics? Well, many people’s first thought would be to do more of them specifically in LEGO, but I’m not sure that’s the best approach. I’m not necessarily against more LEGO biopics, but the combination works here because LEGO and Pharrell Williams have both built their core identities around creativity and adaptability. It’s hard to imagine another artist doing this without it feeling gimmicky.

But simply making more animated biopics is another story altogether. As demonstrated in Piece By Piece, the right combination of artist and art style can create a far more authentic and insightful depiction than any live-action film, so imagining how other musical artists could have their stories told through different animation styles feels incredibly exciting.

You could do a Pink Floyd biopic using the same surrealist and experimental art style as The Wall. Or maybe a Beatles biopic done in an elevated and fluid version of classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons similar to the actual Beatles animated series from the late 1960s. What about a Kurt Cobain or Chester Bennington biopic helmed by Jhonen Vasquez of Invader Zim fame? The possibilities are endless and far more compelling than the same old story seen in live-action.

Piece By Piece is now playing in theaters.