By: Mandy J Watson on 27 October 2011 Category: Screen > Shorts > Reviews Tags: #lego, #horror, #watch

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Murder most foul has be committed in Legoland. The suspects? Three dodgy minifigs. CSI is on the case. After all, to find the culprit it's imperative that you follow the evidence.

CSI: Legoland is a slick animated short by Joe Nicolosi that parodies a number of generic CSI idiosyncracies, particularly emulating the most amusing stylistic devices from CSI: Miami, such as the garishly oversaturated colour palette, characters' penchant for stating the obvious, and Horatio Caine's dramatic sunglasses fetish.

The production values are outstanding and if you have the bandwidth and processing power I'd recommend watching it in full HD. The title-sequence (sans tiles) interlude, as well as various scene cuts, feature aerial shots of the city, which are particularly impressive. There are also stylised flashbacks and science-camera-angle zoom-in shots of important pieces of evidence, all exceptionally well filmed and edited to keep the action punchy and the pace engaging. On a technical level the special effects, such as the the minifigs' moving mouths, were done in Adobe After Effects and the colour correction was done with Colorista.

Behind The (Crime) Scenes You can see some of Joe Nicolosi's behind-the-scenes photos of the short in progress, including storyboard sketches and a close-up shot of the burnt minifig in the crime lab's medical bay.

The sound design is also very good, including the voice acting. "Brock", the lead investigator who is based on Horatio Caine, is particularly smarmy and speaks in Caine's odd, gravelly, punctuated, stunted manner. Much like in the various CSI series, there are many cheesy one-liners and groan-worthy puns but in Legoland, of course, they play on LEGO terminology as well as on murder and mayhem.


This is a fantastic short and really holds up after repeat viewing - the content is so good and so worth seeing more than once that knowing who the killer is is almost irrelevant. The amount of effort put into this production has resulted in a really polished piece of filmmaking and I only wish it had been longer.

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 Watch Online: CSI: Legoland

brainwavez.org Opinion: CSI: Legoland (2011)

Rating: 9/10

Rewatchability: 8/10

In One Word: Sunglasses

Key Facts: CSI: Legoland (2011)

Year: 2011 (18 October 2011)

Running Time: 00:03:48

Genres: Comedy, Horror

Credits: