Pharrell Builds an Exciting Biopic ‘Piece by Piece’

“Piece by Piece” depicts the life of acclaimed artist and music producer Pharrell Williams through an unusual medium — Lego bricks.

“You know what would be cool? If we told my story with Lego pieces,” Pharrell says in the opening minutes of “Piece by Piece.”

Written and directed by Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville, “Piece by Piece” explores the life and career of Williams — known mononymously as Pharrell — who’s also one of the film’s producers.

“Piece by Piece” is structured like a documentary with talking head interviews, on-field taping and home videos all animated with Lego bricks. 

To accurately portray Pharrell’s life, the Lego company designed special pieces to better represent African American culture, such as hair pieces depicting cornrows and locs, as well as a wider array of darker skin tones, according to an interview of Williams published in Variety.

A documentary about Pharrell’s life has been in the works since 2013, however serious steps to create the film weren’t taken until 2019, according to NME. Conversations between Pharrell and Neville began in early 2020, with interviews of Pharrell’s peers taking place soon after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The film spans Pharrell’s childhood growing up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the formation of his band “The Neptunes,” to his prolific career as a producer and ventures outside of the music world.

Even though Pharrell’s story is told through a brand of children’s toy, the film is far from immature. The filmmakers utilize the plastic pieces to show complex emotions and intricate scenes. Psychedelic sequences, amorphous shapes and vivid visuals are created using bricks of different shapes and sizes.  

The motif of the vastness of space runs throughout the film, referencing the galaxy’s infinite possibilities and tying them to Pharrell’s creative process. The abstract idea of a musical breakthrough is portrayed in the movie as the Big Bang, complete with a polychromatic explosion made out of Lego. 

“Piece by Piece” also delves into deeply mature topics, such as how the death of his grandmother sent him into a downward artistic spiral, and how Pharrell helped his friend and fellow rapper Pusha T stop dealing drugs.

Pharrell also discusses how his chromesthesia, a phenomenon in which certain sounds evoke colors or shapes in a person’s perception, caused him to fall in love with music from an early age. 

In one scene, the second a record player’s needle hits the vinyl and plays Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish,” Pharrell is sucked into a tunnel of oranges, yellows and browns. Young Pharrell floats through the song as if it were a lazy river, completely engulfed in the warm sounds of the music. 

Pharrell’s music is portrayed as a mishmash of multi-colored trinkets, which he can physically alter when working. Throughout the film, a Lego Pharrell is seen “building” his songs with small bricks, emphasizing how the songs he produces are akin to a handmade craft.

A gleaming highlight of the film is how it explores Pharrell’s close relationships with friends and family, and how they impact his music. In one touching scene, Pharrell recounts the inspiration for the song “Happy,” in which he’s bathing his newborn son and is filled with so much immeasurable joy he’s compelled to create a song about it.

Another standout feature is the film’s gag-driven, cutaway-heavy humor. Whenever something comedic is said, the scene would — quite literally — build itself around the joke. While Pharrell describes the arrival of Teddy Riley and his studio to Virginia Beach, a spaceship is constructed in the background, coming to “abduct” the existing building to make way for the new studio. 

One glaring flaw of “Piece by Piece” is the film’s PG rating. While the rating leads to funny gags — Snoop Dogg’s famous weed-smoking tendencies replaced with the spraying of “PG gas” — it prohibits integral parts of the story from being told. 

When discussing the importance of the song “Alright” in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement, the clean version of the song is played, causing the scene to feel empty and lose its poignant effect with frequent censoring. 

However, the music underscoring the film is a major positive. The soundtrack is a victory lap of Pharrell’s career, aggregating the most popular and critically acclaimed songs that he took part in creating, including “Drop It Like It’s Hot” and “I Just Wanna Love U.”

Through Lego bricks, “Piece by Piece” transcends the regular documentary experience into avant-garde and abstract areas. 

“Piece by Piece” is in theaters now.