Nearly a decade has passed since Gotham’s biggest superhero peaked in The Dark Knight, and every major Batman film since has ranged from serviceable to tragic. Now's a good time for a shot in Gotham's arm. Could a sillier, tongue-in-cheek take on gravelly ol' Batman do the trick? Enter the Lego franchise, emboldened by 2014's surprise ensemble hit, The Lego Movie, to make Batman the star of its latest spinoff film. This works both for and against the end result. Lego Batman indeed brings the comic series back to fun and watchability in film form, but anybody hoping for Adam West levels of Batman camp will want to cool their bat-heels. More importantly, the new movie is also a huge reminder of what a perfect storm The Lego Movie turned out to be—and how hard it is to make cinematic lightning strike twice. Will Arnett’s version of Batman returns from The Lego Movie, and he opens the film saving the day from The Joker (Zach Galifinakis), who has recruited pretty much every Lego Gotham villain you could imagine to bombard Gotham City.
The famous (Two-Face, The Penguin), the lesser-known (Clayface, Killer Croc), and even the wait-are-these-real (The Eraser, Polka Dot Man) are all here. This wild opening sequence, complete with an amusingly sarcastic setup for how the bad guys launch their plot, exploits the film’s Lego-ized potential—then almost immediately yanks it away. This cacophony of villains seems like the perfect thing for an overblown, cheesy take on Batman, with the villains’ silly, minifig versions jumping around and belting in-jokes and catch phrases. (Clayface’s Lego transformation in particular is a visual treat, made up of a towering swarm of swirling, ill-fitting pieces.) Yet within minutes, that cast of villains is pushed off the film's figurative play table, and we’re zoomed in to a conflict that Lego Batman focuses on for most of the film: the Joker’s burning wish for Batman to care about their adversarial relationship. “You’ve never said you hate me!” Batman takes this opportunity to retort, saying that this is a relationship he could do without.
(Batman’s just not that into you, man.) This send-up will probably seem cuter to anybody who isn’t familiar with The Killing Joke, an Alan Moore graphic novel with essentially the same (albeit far darker) pining-Joker motif that received its own straight-to-video adaptation last year. But it’s not just that this gag has been done before. Galifinakis as a Joker cannot make up his mind between the devilish glee of a Mark Hamill or the neurosis of Galifinakis’ own stand-up material. He’s neither enjoyably bonkers nor entertainingly turned on the usual Joker tropes. The result is one of the flatter cartoon-villain performances in recent memory, and certainly a far cry from Will Ferrell’s zany turn in 2014’s Lego Movie. The film’s momentum is spared somewhat by Arnett, whose cheeseball, overconfident take on Batman carries over from his last try at the role. For the uninitiated: other than not killing people and being a rich orphan, this Batman has pretty much zero in common with any other version of the hero.
He likes announcing himself as a hero, bragging about his abs, and boasting that he's the only guy with good ideas. For all of his chest-puffing, reinforced by a lengthy opening rock song sung by Arnett (with lots of cheeky "na-na-na-na-Batman" moments), this Batman is a total loner. He microwaves his own dinners for one, watches romantic comedies alone, and sits in a palatial Wayne Manor in a bathrobe with his bat helmet still affixed. Alfred tries and fails to remind Batman about pride before the fall, which at least puts the caped crusader in the interesting place of being his own villain. After nearly capturing the Joker in the opening encounter, someone else manages to do so: new commissioner Barbara Gordon. Arnett’s cocky, pompous Batman is only interested in the justice that he himself renders, so he spends the rest of the film scheming to free—and, surely, successfully recapture—the Joker. How many films are we going to get in which producers and writers assumed 2017’s political climate would be, well, different?
Lego Batman surely seems like one. Arnett’s opening song is packed full of the kinds of boasts and bravado that eventually became center-stage stuff in American politics, especially one about wiggling his way out of paying taxes. More eerie is how the Joker eventually tricks the pompous Batman into doing his own nefarious bidding, all while Batman thinks this plot, and its many machinations, are all his own idea. Because the film lacks a strong all-around supporting cast, Arnett’s bluster and bravado edge toward wearing thin by the film’s end. At least Michael Cera’s portrayal of Robin offers the naïve, bright-eyed, and sweetly spoken foil that Arnett desperately needs midway through the film (and it's probably Cera's best feature-film turn in years). The only part of the production to rival Cera, really, is the film’s visual design, which is perhaps the only part of the film that truly goes toe-to-toe with The Lego Movie. Every new scene is packed full of towering Lego contraptions, some of which Batman assembles as a “power builder” on the fly, and the 3D animation team revels in the opportunity to flash silly Lego comic contraptions.
(The Batcave is replete with ridiculous vehicles, for example, including the Bat Kayak and Bat Steam Engine Train.) Compared to lesser Batman films, Lego Batman hits enough good notes to be worth seeing, especially as the first "kid-friendly" Batman in a while. Little ones will enjoy parroting Batman's brags about being "swole" and Robin's acrobatic enthusiasm, while the action set pieces blow straight-to-video Lego films away. If that's your comparison point, you're done here: you've got a solid movie to take the kids to. The Lego Movie is a harder shadow to hide behind, however. The film clearly wants to stand tall with its elder sibling, with glimmers of that film's sense of humor and quickfire, tongue-in-cheek gags—especially in Lego Batman's fun first few minutes. But the writing and ensemble cast simply can't keep up. Chris Pratt was a lot more fun of a hero to both root for and cringe at than Arnett. Rosario Dawson is cut off at the knees by a jarringly flat character to portray—and is saddled by having to tell viewers, over and over, the moral code that Batman eventually gets behind.