Following the success of The Lego Movie (2014) and The Lego Batman Movie (2017) comes the third instalment in the Phil Lord and Christopher Miller series. The screenwriting duo, who also wrote the 21 Jump Street films and 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, don’t direct on this occasion, but their gentle, good-humoured satire remains branded on to every piece of the film’s plasticky goodness. Everything is decidedly Not Awesome now that the nimbly assembled Lego town of Bricksburg has been transformed into the “heckish” Apocalypseburg, after being invaded by adorable, oversize Duplo bricks. Grenades take the form of smiling love hearts that explode into pixelated pink clouds, while deadly yellow stars seem to borrow the face and pitch of Pokémon’s Pikachu.

When wholesome hero Emmet (Chris Pratt) has a dystopian vision of the future that sees the gang banished to the Bin of Storage (“storage” pretentiously pronounced “store-ahge”), he, Lucy (Elizabeth Banks), Batman (Will Arnett) and co venture to the Duplo universe in order to stop their maybe evil queen, Watevra Wa’Nabi (a throaty, effortlessly funny Tiffany Haddish). “My plans are totally sinister... I mean sincere,” she chuckles, beguiling perpetual bat-chelor Batman into proposing to her.

After some resistance (expressed musically by way of a slinking pop song in which she insists “rich boys with gadgets” are simply “not my type”), arrangements are made for an extravagant, candy-coloured wedding. Meanwhile, Emmet meets the id to his ego in the form of stubbly, blue-vested dinosaur wrangler Rex Dangervest(also voiced by Pratt).

The final set piece is a little protracted, but the jokes are mostly sharp and enjoyably self-referential and the songs still catchy (one track is titled Catchy Song). Its placid moral message, of harmony between worlds (and, in the live-action sequences that open and close the film, siblings) is more earnest, but no matter when the animation itself is so thrillingly detailed.