The Lego Ninjago Movie (2017) review

Third big-screen movie featuring the popular plastic building blocks (... and action figures) is Asian-themed: curiosity shop owner Mr. Liu (Jackie Chan) tells the story of secret ninja Lloyd (voiced by Dave Franco), son of nefarious Garmadon (Justin Theroux), battling against his estranged father, who is determined to destroy the city of Ninjago. It took a crack team of no less than nine different people (... dear me) to "prepare" the "story" and "script" for what amounts to Psychic Daddy Problems and a cute gag involving the "Ultimate Weapon" that's just a laser pointer to summon a (real) feline named Meowthra. This came out the same year as Chris McKay's much smarter The Lego Batman Movie, which was devoted to being as crazed and spastic and silly as possible ... which is the angle to take if you're dealing with a glorified advertisement for toys (it also worked because Batman and Robin and Joker are already well-known characters, while here you have a generic group of heroes without any background story).