Magically transported to the fantastical world of Playmobil, a teen joins forces with a bumbling secret agent and an adventurous truck driver to save her captive brother from an evil emperor.
The Lego Movie (the first one) came out back in February of 2014, and considering it made over 460 million at the box office on a film that cost around 60 million to make, was bound to lead to copycats. It was in November 2014 that the Playmobil movie was announced, originally slated to be the first of three films. And yet The Lego Movie got a sequel and two spin-offs (in the Batman and Ninjago franchises) before Playmobil's first release made its way to cinemas on the far end of 2019.
When you look at it, you can't help but realise that they didn't understand the concept that made the Lego film work. It doesn't just need a good story, with likeable characters, a competent voice cast, and catchy tunes, it also needed to incorporate the product as much as possible into the film. The character designs and movements, the set designs and environments, but most importantly including those two conflicting methods of building; following the instructions perfectly, or having the creative freedom to do whatever you want. Playmobil: The Movie does none of this.
Granted, Playmobil is a completely different type of toy. Where Lego is all about constructing your own buildings and making up any story that you want (limited only by your imagination), Playmobil is largely already constructed. You can't make anything else from it, so your scenarios are limited. One could easily compare Playmobil to a dollhouse. And that causes issues with creating a fun story because you would be restricted to just creating a number of small environments and just moving the characters from one location to the next. That is exactly what happens.
Everything does start off intriguingly different, with a live-action opening scene that has little bearing on the remainder of the film. All of a sudden our protagonists are Jumanji'd into Playmobil land, and...well they move from one toy set to another until the film ends. Where The Lego Movie was able to make the audience want to relive the thrill of playing with any Lego, the Playmobile movie is literally a set of advertisements for specific playsets, whether it be the Vikings rip-off, the Pirates of the Caribbean copy, or the Gladiator imitation (and yes, I did check, you can actually buy the "Roman Gladiator Arena", "Pirates Combat Ship", and "Playmobil Viking Longboat"). The lack of subtlety is very abrasive.
It wouldn't matter all that much if there was actually a cohesive story, but alas, the plot is higgledy-piggledy. Conflict is very lazily thrown in, but all obstacles are solved by throwing in a cameo character appearance who knows the answer. There is no sense of tension, the main characters are so poorly set up that you don't care at all about their wellbeing, and all of the supporting characters are empty vessels that don't have anything meaningful to contribute beyond attempting to force comedy into the film, and giving the visual look of a fuller film.
This December has been a horrible time of year for animated films in the theatre (thankfully Netflix's Klaus is picking up the slack), but Playmobil: The Movie is a huge misstep. The musicals are forced and difficult to actually understand (you can't sing along if you can't figure out the words), the animation is a let-down with the character designs matching the style of the toys, but their movements not matching the limitations of the toys (apart from one gag near the start), instead looking like a cheaply animated film. The jokes are repetitive and don't hit the mark, with nothing to appeal to adults...or smart children. Perhaps this will appeal to those aged 4 and under; kids that are excited about bright colours and moving shapes, because that is all that this film has to offer.
Skip it. It's not worth your time.