The life of Pharrell Williams, one of music’s most vibrant, colorful producers, is celebrated in “Piece by Piece,” an at-times deliriously entertaining biopic which takes the Virginia native’s world and animates it in Lego form.
Williams is worthy of the outside-the-box treatment, as his innovative productions have helped redefine hip hop and stretched the genre’s boundaries. If there’s a stumbling block in “Piece by Piece,” it’s that Williams still has a lot of life left to live, and at 51 his story is far from over, so efforts to narrativize his arc for the film’s dramatic purposes feel slightly hollow.
What’s undeniable is the music, and Williams’ productions — from N.E.R.D.’s “Maybe” to Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright”— blanket the film, which covers his rise from Virginia Beach’s Atlantis Apartments to the tip-top of the music industry. Williams’ collaborators, from Pusha T to Gwen Stefani to Snoop Dogg, also show up as their animated likenesses, which makes “Piece by Piece” feel like a childhood playhouse where everyone is welcome.
And truly everyone can come to play in this Lego world: “Piece by Piece” carries a PG rating and uses radio-friendly versions of Williams’ hits where necessary, even cleverly clouding Snoop Dogg’s weed smoke with what the film calls “PG-Spray.” It’s truly an all-ages proposition.
And it’s notable that a hip hop producer’s life and work is being toasted in this manner. We tend to reserve these kinds of honorariums for rock stars or deceased legends deemed Gone Too Soon, and to get one for a Black creator of rap and pop music — and one who’s still living and very much thriving, at that — feels revolutionary, even in 2024.
Alas, there are a few quibbles with how Williams’ story is told. “Piece by Piece” covers Williams’ impeccable string of hits with his producing partner, Chad Hugo, who were together known as the Neptunes. From N.O.R.E.’s “Superthug” in 1998 through Gwen Stefani’s “Wind it Up” in 2006, their sound was the sound of hip hop and popular music, blanketing the culture from No Doubt’s “Hella Good” to Jay-Z’s “I Just Wanna Love U” to Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” to Kelis’ “Milkshake.”
They rang up more than a dozen Top 10 hits, four No. 1 singles, and all-time earth-shakers like Clipse’s “Grindin’,” an eerily sparse beat built over what sounds like a parking lot full of slamming car doors. The duo’s keyboard-heavy sonic creations don’t feel tied to a particular era — they borrow from ’70s funk, ’80s synth-pop and ’90s boom-bap — and by and large still sound fresh today, even the ones you’ve heard 50,000 times.
The Neptunes eventually dissolved, which “Piece by Piece” doesn’t really cover (Williams is no longer on speaking terms with Hugo, which the film doesn’t address) but Williams returned to the top of the charts in 2013 with Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” (for which he’d later be sued, due to its similarities to an earlier Marvin Gaye work) and Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky,” following them up a year later with his universal smash “Happy,” which was recorded for the “Despicable Me 2” soundtrack.
A few years absence from the top of the charts does not for great drama make, but “Piece by Piece” treats it like the dramatic crux of the film, and his eventual comeback a monumental triumph. Really, it was more of a blip on a sterling track record, and its amplification here feels overstated, especially when there are other places — his relationship with Hugo, for starters — from which to mine human drama.
But such is the nature of a biopic whose subject is also its producer. “Piece by Piece” isn’t a warts and all expose, and director Morgan Neville (“20 Feet from Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”) trades storytelling revelations for the pure joy of lauding Williams’ compositions, and bringing them to life in colorful building blocks. The movie has a ton of fun recreating hip hop history with children’s toys.
Williams explains in the movie that he sees music as colors — it’s a condition known as synesthesia — and he explains that it informs how he sees the world. You could say “Piece by Piece” is also informed by a sense of synesthesia, and it helps us see how the inside of Williams’ head both looks and sounds. And it feels hella good.
“Piece by Piece” — 3 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: PG (for language, some suggestive material and thematic elements)
Running time: 1:33
How to watch: Premieres in theaters Oct. 11