Outdated Drivers Are Slowing You Down
One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchPC Slower Than It Used to Be?
A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have jointly directed five feature films, moving from animated food calamity to live-action comedy, a toy-built world, and a science-fiction adventure. Ranked here by comedy, formal invention, story, emotional payoff, and how distinctly each expands their shared filmography, The LEGO Movie takes the top spot, with Project Hail Mary close behind. This is an editorial ranking, not an official or universal verdict.
The five-film count covers the four shared feature credits on the Directors Guild of America’s 2020 record and adds Project Hail Mary, which the British Film Institute identified as their new film in 2026. It excludes movies they produced or wrote without jointly directing.
![22 Jump Street (2 Discs) [Blu-ray] by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment by Christopher Miller Phil Lord](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61Su9jyQV7L._SL160_.jpg)
What movies have Phil Lord and Christopher Miller directed together?
Their five shared feature directing credits span very different challenges: adapting a picture book, reviving a television property as a comedy, turning a toy brand into a story, escalating a meta-sequel, and adapting a science-fiction novel. The Directors Guild of America lists the first four titles; the BFI’s 2026 career overview adds Project Hail Mary.
- Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
- 21 Jump Street (2012)
- The LEGO Movie (2014)
- 22 Jump Street (2014)
- Project Hail Mary (2026)
This list is about directing together, not the pair’s wider careers as writers, producers, or television directors. Sony Pictures Animation, for example, identifies them as producers of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The Mitchells vs. The Machines; those films are not additional joint feature directing credits. The DGA’s 2020 record and the BFI’s 2026 interview provide the basis for the five-title scope.
The Tool Desk
Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →#1 Best Overall
How this ranking works
The order weighs how well each film balances comedy and timing, formal invention, story and character, emotional payoff, and its distinct contribution to the duo’s filmography. It is an editorial judgment: the cited career records and interview do not establish a definitive ranking, and no box-office or review-score formula is being used.
1. The LEGO Movie (2014)
The LEGO Movie is the most complete expression of Lord and Miller’s knack for making an apparently restrictive premise feel limitless. A world built from a toy system becomes the source of the film’s visual logic and its jokes, rather than just a backdrop for brand references. The film’s playful construction gives its comedy a distinctive rhythm, while its story reaches beyond novelty to make imagination and conformity matter to its characters.
That combination earns it the top position: invention serves both the laughs and the emotional shape of the story. Its main vulnerability is also its strength—its rapid-fire gags and self-aware energy can feel relentless if a viewer prefers a quieter, more conventional adventure.
2. Project Hail Mary (2026)
Project Hail Mary is the pair’s most ambitious change of scale and tone: a science-fiction adventure adapted from Andy Weir’s novel, with an astronaut protagonist who encounters a sentient, rock-shaped passenger. Its strongest claim to this high ranking is the relationship at the center of a story that begins in isolation and opens into an unusual friendship.
Quick wins for a faster PC:
Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →In the BFI interview, Lord and Miller said they retained the novel’s flashback structure and surprises. Miller described the book as “a 16-hour audio book,” explaining that plot mechanics had to be removed for a film while the spirit of its relationships remained important. The directors also described aiming for a warm, tactile, lived-in spaceship; Lord said, “We wanted the whole movie to feel like you were in the guts of a machine and also in the guts of a person.” These are the filmmakers’ accounts of their adaptation choices, not a claim that every element of the novel could fit onscreen.
Its placement below The LEGO Movie reflects a narrower distinction: the new film’s appeal rests more heavily on its central adventure and relationship, while The LEGO Movie fuses its premise, comedy, visual form, and emotional payoff with unusual completeness. The BFI interview offers useful context for why the project appealed to the duo: Lord said, “The common thread is we like projects that seem impossible to pull off.” Read the BFI interview with Lord and Miller.
3. 21 Jump Street (2012)
21 Jump Street turns the premise of a familiar television property into the joke engine of a lively buddy comedy. Rather than treating its source as something to reproduce solemnly, the film makes the characters’ awkward attempt to pass as students part of the comedy. Its strongest asset is timing: the central partnership gives the jokes a human anchor, and the genre setup keeps the film moving.
It ranks behind the top two because its pleasures are more closely tied to the effectiveness of its comic duo and familiar action-comedy machinery than to a fully transformed visual world or a larger emotional idea. But its basic reinvention is sharp, and the film establishes the self-aware, collaborative comic mode that its sequel later pushes further.
4. 22 Jump Street (2014)
The sequel’s best idea is to make repetition itself the target. By sending the partners through another undercover assignment and openly playing with the expectation that a sequel should repeat a hit, 22 Jump Street gets fresh jokes from a familiar setup. Its meta-comedy works best when it is also character comedy: the detectives’ partnership remains the reason the escalating bits matter.
It lands below 21 Jump Street because the self-aware sequel framework can call attention to its own construction more than it develops the story. The film is clever about being a follow-up, but that cleverness sometimes takes precedence over surprise or emotional progression.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.5. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs tackles a deliberately slim foundation: a picture-book idea about food falling from the sky. Lord and Miller expand that image into a feature-length animated comedy by treating its absurd premise as an invitation to invent. The result makes their appetite for big comic ideas visible early in their shared directing filmography.
It ranks fifth not because the premise lacks imagination, but because the other four films pair their central conceits with stronger overall combinations of story, character, and payoff. The film’s exuberance can outpace its emotional depth, yet its leap from a compact image to a full animated world neatly signals the kind of hard-to-pull-off project the directors say they like.
What the ranking says about their shared filmography
The five films are not variations on a single genre. Animation lets Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The LEGO Movie turn visual premises into whole worlds; the Jump Street films use familiar conventions as comic material; and Project Hail Mary shifts toward an adventure shaped by isolation, problem-solving, and friendship. The connective thread is less a signature setting than a willingness to treat a difficult premise as the beginning of the creative problem.
For viewers choosing what to start with, The LEGO Movie is the strongest all-around pick in this ranking; Project Hail Mary offers the clearest change of genre and scale; and the Jump Street pair is the choice for live-action buddy comedy. That recommendation follows the criteria above, not a claim about general audience consensus. One Reddit discussion asks, “Favorite Phil Lord/Chris Miller movie(s)?”, but a single prompt is not a representative poll. See the discussion prompt.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
