Pharrell Williams is an unusually creative person, so it’s fitting that the bio-doc Piece By Piece would similarly operate outside the proverbial box.

Visually told through animated LEGOs, Morgan Neville’s latest winner pushes the nonfiction filmmaking form to new imaginative heights while largely adhering to tried-and-true approaches. Though at heart a straightforward documentary, full of talking head interviews, the deep dive into Williams’ life and mind offers steady feasts for the eyes and allows Neville to run wild while still adhering to the singular stylistic approach.

Thankfully, it's not so overly ambitious in its narrative that it loses sight of the main objective. Piece By Piece ably tells the phenomenal story of how the Virginia Beach native rose to music superstardom, and the LEGOs provide inventive sights that illustrate speakers’ points in ways that typically would call for a traditionally animation tangent. However, since we’re already in that realms, these choices somehow work even better.

As such, Neville and his team can show the Blue Angels flying overhead or Williams bringing Chicken McNuggets home to his friends without them feeling like rote dramatizations/recreations. And when Williams and childhood friend Chad Hugo start making music together, that alluring visual foundation continues to build in increasingly eye-popping ways.

But, since Piece By Piece is a story about a musician, Neville is careful to deliver on that front as well. Besides a Stevie Wonder classic and a few other exceptions, the doc is scored to memorable Neptunes and Williams-produced tracks — elder millennial catnip in the form of infectious hits that served as the soundtrack for life in the early 2000s.

The sense of glee continues to run high in the form of hilarious LEGO recreations of iconic music videos and such sights as a revolving studio stage that showcases The Neptunes’ versatility and ubiquity. It's also amusing to see LEGO versions of Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Jay-Z, Pusha T, Daft Punk, Gwen Stefani (and No Doubt!), Justin Timberlake, and others, but early collaborators like N.O.R.E. and Teddy Riley come off especially insightful in their recollections.

While Neville nails these nostalgic moments, he's a little too ambiguous exploring Williams’ cold stretch in the late 2000s. Interviewees state facts like “the Neptunes broke up” and imagery shows Williams giving too much credence to business people in the industry, but one doesn’t get a great sense of precisely what transpired.

Furthermore, hip-hop heads may scratch their heads at the downplaying of Timbaland’s industry importance, the erasure of Malice from Clipse, and N.E.R.D. barely being mentioned, but casual viewers likely won’t care. For them (and the heads), Piece By Piece remains a visual and sonic wonderland that celebrates Williams’ evolving musical style and his often questionable fashion sense, including his Man in the Yellow Hat phase. That's enough to keep any moviegoer happy.

Grade: A-minus. Rated PG.

(Photo: Focus Features)