It would have been unthinkable for a movie that originated in a toy company’s marketing department to be up for any Oscars at all

The Lego Movie received eight nominations, including one for Best Picture.

Critic Tom Charity: Not long ago, it would have been unthinkable for a movie that originated in the bowels of a toy company’s marketing department to be up for any Oscars at all.

Charity: Using stories to sell products to children is as old as Saturday morning cartoons.

The Lego Movie works to keep its audience’s expectations low, even as its thematic and philosophical ambitions swell.

The movie's conceptual masterstroke isn’t its cutaway to the real world, but in submerging viewers in a universe defined by the titular product.

The moral is that anyone can be creative, no matter how dumb or bad their ideas may seem.

We are all creators, if only of the nebulous stuff known as “content” We make ourselves up as we go along, tailoring our expression of self to the ethos of a given app.

But the selves we create don’t belong to us, existentially or legally. We’re building with someone else’s blocks and they can take them away whenever they want.