Pharrell Williams' Bouncy Outside the Box doc

Andy Warhol imagined a future in which everyone would be world famous for 15 minutes – a prediction that actually came true thanks to TikTok and reality TV. So here's a revised forecast: We now live in a time in which everyone can have documentaries made about them (and a lot of people want to).

That may be true for musicians, so it won't surprise anyone to learn that it's the turn of “Happy” hook factory Pharrell Williams. What you probably didn't expect was the form, which is just as playful as his music. As soon as Williams sits down for his interview with director Morgan Neville in “Piece by Piece,” the rapper, producer and entrepreneur muses: “What if we told my life with Legos?” You know, a fully animated brick film, à la “ The Lego Movie,” whose real-life subject is represented by a CG plastic toy with inked cheekbones and the best virtual lighting money can buy.

Neville (who appears as a fluffy beige minifigure with a gray beard and glasses) giggles nervously, as if to say, “That'll never happen.” But if there's one thing “Piece by Piece” wants you to know, it's that Williams is often heard from Inspirations are captured that mere mortals cannot see. That's how he makes music – using synesthesia, where the beat appears to him as living colors in his brain. He developed successful sneaker and skateboard lines as well as skin care and streetwear lines as well as the rare flop like Q Qream liqueur.

As Williams tells his music-loving interlocutor (Neville also directed “Twenty Feet From Stardom”), the Lego version is “the best way to be my limitless self without feeling weird.” God forbid a documentary filmmaker feels strange when he sits for an interview. And yet, to those who know their “Lego Movie” history, the choice makes a strange sense — and certainly sets this optimistic portrait apart from the oversaturated music documentary category.

Consider that in Lord and Miller's 2014 blockbuster (which revolutionized the field of animation but did not receive a nomination in the corresponding Oscar category), a completely unremarkable worker minifigure is mistaken for “the special one”: “The Prophecy says that you are the most important, most talented, most interesting and most extraordinary person in the universe,” he said.

In the world of “Piece by Piece,” that person is Pharrell Williams, whose unconventional beat-making skills set the Virginia Beach-born prodigy apart—and whose positivity proves infectious. Accompanied by fresh, carefully reworked versions of Williams' signature hits (as well as several introspective new songs), the film conveys the feeling that anyone, regardless of background, can achieve similar success as long as they put in the work. In that sense, it would be a useful consideration in many American classrooms, where its inspiring potential outweighs the lack of obstacles in its story.

Williams was fortunate to have adults who saw his potential at almost every turn, from the grandmother who gave him a snare drum to producer Teddy Riley, who opened Future Records across the street from Williams High School, where Timbaland and Missy were Elliott's students were . Riley signed the Neptunes (Williams' first group) after seeing them at a school talent show, and then hired Williams to freestyle his role in Wreckx-n-Effect's “Rump Shaker” (coincidentally). Lego buttocks don't shake, and yet). , Pure Imagination's CG reimagining of the video is still worth the price of admission.

No one can blame the hip-hop prodigy for being impatient. The film turns his hunger into humor as Williams makes his way into the offices of record labels and A&R reps. It's fun to see Jay-Z, Gwen Stefani and Justin Timberlake in Lego form as Neville dynamically summarizes the Neptunes' contributions to pop music. Williams' beats, depicted as bouncing blocks of color, are trending, launching more than a dozen Billboard Top 10 tracks for artists looking for a funky, original sound. Snoop Dogg appears in a cloud of virtual marijuana smoke and describes how Pharrell “saw the fun in me” with “Drop It Like It's Hot,” giving the rapper his first No. 1 hit.

So where is the conflict? Williams' solo career took longer to take off than fans expected – which the artist attributes to arrogance, although immaturity seems to be the main obstacle for a boy who, according to Jay-Z, had “not a drop of street” in him. “You couldn’t tell me life wasn’t great,” Williams says, reflecting on an upbringing that others might consider disadvantageous. Today, as a husband and father, Williams has such an appreciative “everything is great” attitude that it's difficult to view career setbacks as anything other than speed bumps.

Paradoxically, the Lego approach gives the film a much more imaginative visual range than traditional documentaries, even as it robs us of what we want to see most: human faces. Compared to Lego's ultra-simple early tube student days, there are now custom-made pieces for almost every purpose, from a scale model of the Eiffel Tower to a random mention of ET. And yet these little yellow plastic heads and hands are also far too limited to depicting real people. The film can only correct this to a certain extent, providing shading and facial expressions that are missing from the actual toy line.

Although the Lego strategy is significantly more difficult to pull off, it can sometimes feel like a cheat – an indulgence that highlights the vanity aspect of the project. As a producer and subject, this is how Williams wants to be seen. Admittedly, the Magic Hour footage looks great, and all the CG Lego replacements the team found for real people and props are meta-amusing. Still, “Piece by Piece” looks far too fancy to be considered anything deeper than a spectacular branding exercise.

Williams clearly sensed the unique way animation can enhance certain emotions by illustrating abstract ideas with pop art visuals. With “Despicable Me”, for which he wrote the music, he dealt with the medium for the first time. Now that it's all about the ultimate Lego trip, he sees both toons and the versatile building block toys as a metaphor for limitless creativity.