Piece by Piece, outdoors in Memorial Park, Nyack FREE

Piece by Piece takes viewers on a vibrant journey through the life of cultural icon Pharrell Williams, as told by his community of musicians, his family and friends, himself, and a lot of Legos. Turn up the volume on your imagination and witness the evolution of one of music’s most innovative minds and careers – with perseverance, teamwork, humility, gratitude.

Brought to you by
Rivertown Film, Village of Nyack, Visit Nyack, Angel Nyack, Nyack Center
and
Main Street Beat, Music For Life, Rock Shop Nyack, Nyack NAACP, Diamonds and Pearls, Friends of Visit Nyack

“It is deep and surreal and often adorable. Is it high concept or low? Like Williams, it’s a bit of both.” Associated Press

“A colorful journey lit up with great tunes and a deep love of music — an ingenious, infectious new spin on the music doc.” – Time Out

“Williams admits he was considered an oddball by others, confessing, ‘It broke my spirit.’ But weird kids out there (or the weird adults they became) might find solace as little Pharrell finds his crew, each of whom also revels in making music. From there, Piece By Piece becomes a story of succeeding by staying true to yourself and putting in the work to build your dream, brick by brick.” –Mashable

“A hilarious, propulsive and disarmingly joyous ride. Pharrell’s a great choice for an animated biography, not just because Happy makes him Minions-adjacent, but because his music is even more widely appealing than Taylor Swift’s. Even if you’re not a Pharrell fan, he probably helped one of your faves – whether it’s Pusha T, Beyoncé, Gwen Stefani or Britney Spears – make some of their biggest hits.” – The Guardian

“The LEGO animation enhances our understanding of Williams’ process. It can be challenging to represent creation in a documentary, but here Neville, with the help of editors Jason Zeldes, Aaron Wickenden and Oscar Vazquez, offers dynamic sequences that offer glimpses of how Williams’ mind works.” – Hollywood Reporter

“It is the animated Lego biographical documentary that we didn’t know we needed: this portrait of Pharrell Williams is an exuberant joy.” – The Times (UK)

“In a season of unconventional musicals, Piece by Piece is the most infectious one — a party for the eyes and ears. It’s too bad the seats in the movie theaters may constrain people from getting up and dancing.” – Wall Street Journal

“That efflorescence of sensation is matched by the visual overstimulation — mostly pleasant, sometimes wearing, occasionally stunning — of the film’s animation.” – Washington Post

“How many opportunities do you get to answer the question, “What would Kendrick Lamar look like as a LEGO dude?,” much less hear Williams give you a first-person account of making history in the studio?” – Rolling Stone

“If you only know Pharrell Williams from his hit single Happy you will have your mind completely blown by how many classic songs he and his producing partner Chad Hugo have been directly responsible for, or at least guided to fruition. It’s such an incredible, high volume, high quality artistic output that it’s legitimately hard to process, but to hear Pharrell tell it, it was his day job.” – IndieWire

“Piece By Piece sidesteps feeling rote by doing something that seems, frankly, bizarre.” Critic’s Pick – The New York Times

Following are excerpts from the New York Times review of Piece By Piece on October 10, 2024, by Alissa Wilkinson.

Piece by Piece Review: Pharrell Williams’s Life, in Legos
The producer and musician gets the biographical documentary treatment — with an unexpected twist.

Credit where it’s due: In a sea of formulaic biographical documentaries about musicians, Piece by Piece, about the life of the hitmaker and entrepreneur Pharrell Williams, stands out boldly. Not because it doesn’t follow the usual narrative formula. It absolutely does: humble beginnings, rocket toward stardom, crash and then, inevitably, resurrection. That’s all so standard to the genre that it’s practically calcified.

No, Piece by Piece pops because everyone — including Williams and the film’s director, Morgan Neville — is played by animated Legos.

The movie was clever and inventive, but the choice of toy worked, too: Legos are recognizable, beloved and, most important, endlessly open to reinterpretation. There’s no reason not to mingle your Lego Hogwarts set with your Lego Star Wars set in the shadow of your Lego Eiffel Tower alongside your little cousin’s Duplo trucks, and that’s the fun of them — the potential for chaos and imagination.

The playfulness fits Williams’s aesthetic, which ranges from producing beats and albums for that dizzying array of artists to recording his own megahit “Happy” to collaborating on lines of streetwear, fragrances, eyeglasses, sneakers and skin care. He’s clearly bursting with ideas all the time, and that’s the narrative of the film: This is a man who never stops dreaming of ways to remix the world. It’s his playground, his sandbox. Legos fit right in.

The effect of the animation is oddly charming, and elevates the watchability of Piece by Piece more than you might expect. It’s impossible not to giggle, for instance, when Minifigure Snoop Dogg — whose work with Williams on “Drop It Like It’s Hot” gave Snoop his first chart-topping hit — appears in a cloud of weed smoke, or when a rapper’s music video is reinterpreted with Legos.

Piece By Piece sidesteps feeling rote by doing something that seems, frankly, bizarre. That it works at all is a product of the quirky form fitting the subject well. It’s chaotic, sure. But that’s the fun of it.