'The Lego Movie' Brilliantly Subverts Movie Tropes
The Lego Movie achieves great humor and story with a combination of childish comedy, adult references, irony, and by subverting popular movie tropes.

Ambitious press agent Jack Murray introduces two of his clients, Follies dancer Mabel Vandegrift and prize fighter Joe Cain, to each other and they fall in love. After Brock Morton, the owner of the show, says that he will bring down the curtain on the show in the middle of opening night unless Mabel renounces Joe, the latter goes on the stage and announces that, in spite of his prior refusal, that he will fight the English boxing champion. With the money he gets from boxing promoter Tex Rickard, he buys out Morton and the show goes on. Prior to the fight, Morton dopes Joe, but he is brought around so that he is able to fight and eventually wins the match. Joe's father comes east and then brings Joe and Mabel back west with him. A lost film.
The Lego Movie achieves great humor and story with a combination of childish comedy, adult references, irony, and by subverting popular movie tropes.
'Free Guy' combines classic Disney (a white heteronormative love story), exploration of popular video games and the culture around them, and Ryan Reynolds adult humor in the best way to make a super fun family flick.
The “gay best friend”, an age-old trope, has been done in countless films and television series. Ranging from one-note (Sex and the City's Stanford and Mario) to nuanced (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt's Tituss), the gay best friend exists to support and advise the main protagonist, with their conflicts swept to the side.
"First Day" is a trans kid slice-of-life tv show that brings desperately needed diversity to coming-of-age stories in mainstream media. Here's a show that get's it right by having a trans actress in a story centered on trans girlhood.
Escape The Field is a serviceable horror thriller. The characters are easier to remember as horror character tropes. As I wrote this review, I only remembered the characters by their tropes: #FinalGirl, #Everyman, #Badass, #MeanB*/SexyGirl, #Realist/BlackLesbian, and #TheNerd.
The Djinn is about childhood traumas and lifestyle changes. It tells the story of Dylan (Ezra Dewey), a mute boy who blames himself for his mom’s death. He also condemns himself for being speech-impaired, and he thinks that if he did not have that condition, everything could had been different.