Tonight, I went to McMenamin’s on Hawthorne with all of my roommates plus a friend from out of town, drank a couple of good beers (which is enough to get little old me a bit drunk), and sidled over to the Bagdad Theatre. I wasn’t expecting anything too spectacular—in fact, I hadn’t been planning on seeing the movie at all, but the roomies wanted to go and there was nothing else going on, so I figured hey, what’s five bucks to drink in a movie theater for a couple of hours? Plus, I had been hearing the buzz about its unexpected popularity with the over-12 crowd since it came out, and, thanks to my current status as a professional nanny, I had been hearing quotes from the trailer for a month at this point from the boys I babysit, and figured I might as well keep up with my charges’ interests every once in awhile. The first ten minutes were fun, with the cute pop theme song of the movie, “Everything Is Awesome” (which is still stuck in my head, thanks) setting the background to a long stream of tongue-in-cheek jokes and cool building sequences.

Then everything got shitty.

Let’s start with the love interest. Wyldstyle is introduced as a super badass, butt-kicking, punk rock chick with attitude and mystique; she is quickly established as a supporting love interest with a few quirks, and boring ones at that. The main points of interest in this character (after her badassery) are A) her short hair with two omg-so-rebellious streaks of pink and blue, and B) her less-than-sweet-and-docile attitude. She rescues Emmet over and over in the beginning of the movie, before ceding her position of capable heroine to the less able hero so that he can discover his strengths and establish his individuality and all that. So, basically, she’s a really boring manic pixie dream girl. Despite her lack of complexity, she is obviously more suited to the responsibility of being the “special” than Emmet is—wise POC character Vitruvius even tells her she is supposed to be the special before she informs him that the protagonist, Emmet is, apparently, the chosen one or whatever…which of course Vitruvius accepts immediately, despite the fact that he MADE THE PROPHECY UP and could have chosen somebody more qualified (LIKE WYLDSTYLE) to be the special. Because, you know, obviously we can’t have the supporting female love interest have an actual purpose in the film other than being the supporting female love interest. And you know what’s even worse? Wyldstyle even confesses to Emmet that she’s super bummed because she wanted to be the special! Because she’s easily the most qualified for the job, but then Emmet was chosen instead for supposedly no particular reason, which is just WAY TOO REAL because HELLO, SEXIST JOB MARKET.

Naturally, Wyldstyle ends up with the male protagonist in the end because…well, I’m not sure, actually, but probably because there’s this one scene where she thinks her boyfriend, Batman, dumped her, and Emmet is like, “You’re a really amazing person, and if he can’t see that…” blah blah blah, and then another scene where he’s like, “You’re always acting so tough, but I don’t think that’s the real you,” because obviously he knows that girls are never actually tough since they’re all pink and gooey on the inside and just need a man to appreciate their femininity and all that delightfully patronizing bullshit. It certainly isn’t the case that he actually saw through her rough exterior to some soft, submissive truth, because he most certainly does not view her as an equal person—early in the movie, Wyldstyle starts filling Emmet in on some pretty important secret-alliance-rebellion-type stuff, and we get to see Emmet literally interpreting this as, “Blah blah blah, I’m really pretty, blah blah blah, I really like you, Emmet.” From beginning to end, Emmet sees Wyldstyle as he wants her to be (i.e. as the supporting female love interest), not as she is (i.e. a badass character with a lot to offer regardless of her gender), and therefore so do we.

Oh, and can I point out the fact that he doesn’t even “win her heart” in the sense that she gets to choose who to love? He doesn’t, in fact, have to “win her heart” at all—he just has to beat out the other guy: Batman. And, since he’s the bumbling, inept, coming-into-his-own white heterosexual male protagonist, of course he beats out the super cool, hyper-masculine white heterosexual male competitor for the love interest. In the end, Batman concedes to WyldStyle, “He’s the hero you deserve.” Ugh. She doesn’t even get to choose to be with Emmet instead of Batman in the end; Batman has to give his blessing for her, the prize girlfriend, to be transferred to the possession of another man. It was lucky we were nearly the only people in the theater. I may have said some very rude things to the screen. Loudly.

It only gets worse, I promise: next let me talk about POC’s in the movie. Ok, so Morgan Freeman’s character, Vitruvius, obviously fulfills the stereotype of wise old brown person (it’s not entirely clear whether he’s black or Native American) that gives advice to the protagonist and helps him on his journey of self-discovery. Unlike many such characters in other stories, he manages to survive not only the first ten minutes (though even then he appears to have died when the villain kicks him off a cliff in the very first scene), but the majority of the movie; even so, he does, of course, die. The only character that is unmistakably black is the Star Wars set’s Lando Calrissian, who promptly dies roughly ninety seconds after he is introduced. So far, all racial tropes present and accounted for.

The only other POC’s represented are the (presumed) Latinos waving maracas around for Lord Business’s ridiculous Tako Tuesday event and then the Indian chiefs, complete with war paint, tomahawks, and feathered headdresses, in the Western town. None of these characters—oops, I mean stereotypes—speak. The Latinos just grin and wave maracas in celebration of free tacos, and the Indians scowl, grunt, and throw a tomahawk at Emmet for no apparent reason other than that they’re Indians so they must feel threatening. Goddamit, Lego.

The one and only concession I’ll make about this movie is that I liked the overt message: following the instructions is cool, because the people that make the original Lego designs are amazing and worth copying, but creativity is also awesome and you should be proud of your own ideas too. Ok, there you go, Lego. Well done. Other than that, you suck.

I went to the movie without high expectations (I mean, this is Lego we’re talking about—not exactly an equal opportunity toymaker), or at least that’s what I thought, but I realize now that I’ve actually seen enough movies that were great and that, in addition to being great, also challenged the normative somehow, that my standards have been ever-so-slightly raised. Every movie I’ve ever seen has fallen short in some ways, but the ones I like also push the traditional narrative aside in some ways. The problem I have with The Lego Movie is that it adheres to so many of the traditional, stereotype-heavy, minority-oppressing, white-ablebodied-heterosexual-cisgendered-male-narrative-focused tropes and plot devices; that, frankly, I was bored. Bored out of my mind. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen, but throughout the movie I could predict where the plot was going and, of course, how it would all end. Yes, I understand that this is a children’s movie, though it was also meant to be entertaining to all ages, but come on. Just because kids will be satisfied with predictable plots doesn’t mean filmmakers (and toymakers, for that matter) can’t do more than that. Come on, Lego. Level up. You taught the message to us yourself in that horrible movie, and that message was the one good thing you asked of us, your viewers, your customers. So now I ask the same of you: build us something better. Build us something new.