Piece By Piece Builds the Perfect Story For Pharrell

Piece by Piece Release date: October 11, 2024

TV rating: PG

Starring Cast: Pharrell Williams, Morgan Neville, Chad Hugo, Pusha T, Kendrick Lamar, Gwen Stefani, Snoop Dogg, Timbaland, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake

Piece By Piece is the latest documentary/musical production from Universal Pictures and Focus Features. The documentary chronicles the life of singer, songwriter, record producer, and more, Pharrell Williams from his childhood in Virginia to his success in the music and fashion industry. Sounds like your average documentary, right? Wrong. This film stands out above the rest with a story about a young Black man rising from the projects and into the entertainment industry through LEGO animation. Yes, LEGOs.

Watching the film in the beautiful Linwood Dunn Theater in Los Angeles was magical, but attending the LEGO activation space right after was incredible. Not only did I feel the nostalgia of playing with LEGOs, but there was also a whimsical joy of creating LEGO people who look like me and deep diving into a pit of LEGO pieces to create whatever my imagination could come up with. The activation was enhanced with delicious bites and a rare Q&A with Pharrell and Director Morgan Neville. The Q&A was brief but inspiring. You can see and hear how genuinely happy and appreciative Pharrell and Neville were. There was such a positive aura about the entire event, which made absolute sense given the positive vibes that came from watching Piece By Piece.

I never thought I would get teary-eyed from a LEGO movie, but, here we are. The film moves beyond your generic biography of a celebrity and urges the audience to make a move while keeping the facts about Pharrell on record. The interviews and stories from Piece By Piece are far more fun and interesting to watch and listen to in LEGO form. Seeing thoughts, sounds, and reenactments in full color is amazing. The animation was fun to watch. It wasn’t The LEGO Movie crisp, but it felt like that was intentional. Not all documentaries are as crisp as some narrative features, so it just made sense. I can’t see another artist doing it like this. Pharrell’s story had so much to it, that this seems the only way to get his biography out there for every generation to enjoy. 

Music fans rejoice. The music in Piece By Piece is phenomenal. From the back-in-the-day jams to the new original songs, everything flows nicely and sounds fantastic. There were songs in this film that I didn’t even know were produced or written by Pharrell. I was entertained and I learned some things, which is what a celebrity doc is supposed to do. The original score just adds another layer to the musicality of the documentary. Every sound and song was intentional and added to the flow of the story. After watching the film, I searched for a Spotify playlist for Pharrell the producer, Pharrell the singer, and Pharrell the songwriter to see what other songs I didn’t know he had a hand in. 

Director Morgan Neville (Won’t You Be My Neighbor) was included in the documentary as a LEGO piece, which added a fun approach to the interview process. This view of the question-and-answer portion of the story was a nice intersection of documentary and journalism. The same tact that Neville used in his documentary about Fred Rogers, was evident here as he handled Pharrell’s story and captured what audiences would like to see with integrity. Piece by Piece is truly an enchanting documentary, that brings emotions to the surface and encourages everyone to seek what they are passionate about. The documentary is now in theaters.