Dir: Chris McKay Starring: Will Arnett, Rosario Dawson, Michael Cera, Zach Galifianakis, Mariah Carey, Billy Dee Williams, Ralph Fiennes (voices) U cert, 104 min Don’t tell Ben Affleck – he seems sad enough already – but the actor has just been made surplus to requirements by one and a half inches of moulded plastic. Of course I mean Lego Batman, whose debut solo feature, spun off from a propitious extended cameo in The Lego Movie three years ago, arrives in cinemas almost everywhere next week. Followers of the current batch of live-action DC Comics films may not be stunned to hear it’s immeasurably more stylish, spectacular, deftly written, thematically rich, visually ravishing and generally delightful than anything yet to feature the latest, Affleck-essayed incarnation of Actual Batman. Oh, and it’s funny too. Frantically and relentlessly so, in that way you can feel your brain lurch and grab at punchlines as they whistle past your head. While it never achieves, or even reaches for, The Lego Movie’s unexpected profundity and emotional bite, in purely logistical terms, The Lego Batman Movie is a thing of wonder.
There are around four (great) films’ worth of action and jokes here, crammed into a story so streamlined it might have been assembled in the Lockheed wind tunnel. It also offers a fresh and arguably topical spin on its title character. Voiced again with gravelly self-importance by Will Arnett, here Batman is a spoilt hereditary-billionaire narcissist with a persecution complex, whose self-styled tough stance on law and order has kept Gotham mired in perpetual chaos. Things change with the appointment of a new police commissioner, Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), who immediately unveils a progressive criminal justice policy agenda that threatens to make the Caped Crusader redundant. (There is a slyly hilarious sequence in which Batman attempts to mansplain, or perhaps Batmansplain, how crime works to the female chief of police.) Then enter The Joker (Zach Galifianakis), who uses Batman’s subsequent Bat-huff to get one over on his age-old foe, largely because their goodie-baddie relationship’s ongoing lack of exclusivity, in a world not short on C-list evildoers, has started to hurt.
“I don’t currently have a bad guy,” Batman feebly explains to him, before adding, with a twist of the knife: “I’m fighting a few different people.” This sets the stage for a catastrophe the like of which it’s fair to say Gotham has never seen before, although to reveal exactly who’s involved would give away the film’s single most joyous barrage of comic surprises. (As you watch, listen out for some inspired voice casting that only enriches the joke.) But even from the start, the film’s rogue’s gallery is impressive: almost every Batman villain you can think of puts in a fleeting appearance in its luxuriously OTT opening set-piece. Writers Seth Grahame-Smith, Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers have plumbed the Bat-catalogue for lesser-known nemeses, from unlikely kid-friendly versions of noirish fiends such as The Red Hood and March Harriet to half-forgotten loons like the 1960s TV series’ King Tut and The Eraser, a man disguised as a rubber-topped HB pencil.
In fact, the whole film dives deep into Batman lore without ever losing its lightness. Tableaux from every previous Batman film are recreated in Lego form, as is an exhaustive array of historical Batsuits and Batmobiles – although some of the, ahem, snazzier costumes both admired and modelled by the completely adorable pair of Robin (Michael Cera) and Alfred the Butler (Ralph Fiennes) are all-new. Director Chris McKay plainly knows what he’s doing: as well as serving as director of animation on The Lego Movie, he worked on the stop-motion pop-culture comedy series Robot Chicken, with which The Lego Batman Movie shares a knack for low-key absurdity. (For instance, Gotham City’s mayor is voiced by an immediately recognisable Mariah Carey.) And as with the first Lego film, the animators’ ingenuity in rendering, via computer graphics, everything the story demands in trademarked plastic bricks is both a creative triumph and a masterstroke of brand extension. There’s no grand entreaty this time to rebuild the world around you rather than settling for a life lived by the instruction book.
But its portrayal of the joy of collaborative play remains as fluorescently persuasive as ever. I watched, I laughed, I ordered the sets.Review: THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE Posted by: Robert Reineke Date: February 19, 2017 SYNOPSIS: In the irreverent spirit of fun that made THE LEGO MOVIE a worldwide phenomenon, the self-described leading man of that ensemble � LEGO Batman � stars in his own big-screen adventure: THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE. But there are big changes brewing in Gotham, and if he wants to save the city from The Joker�s hostile takeover, Batman may have to drop the lone vigilante thing, try to work with others and maybe, just maybe, learn to lighten up. Who has the coolest gadgets? Who has the tricked out ride? Who does the sickest backflips? - "Who�s the (Bat)Man" by Patrick Stump THE LEGO BATMAN movie is both a love letter to Batman and a merciless deconstruction of the faults of ultimate angry loner Batman. That the film manages to pull both of these things off, when they could easily cancel each other out, is a testament to the skill and care put into the film.
It�s a kids movie, one told at 1,000 miles an hour, full of jokes, but those are the frills, it�s built around a solid story told with heart. The story of loner Batman having his family and humanity restored to him through surrogate son Robin is certainly not a new one. Certainly, writers and artists taking a look at the Batman and Robin relationship have been eager to use that as a way to make their relationship have meaning beyond just giving Batman someone to talk to. Joel Schumacher certainly butted up against the story in his two films, but never really committed to exploring it and anything more than a sub-plot. THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE makes it the lynchpin of the story and that helps make it satisfying. Will Arnett�s Batman really isn�t like too many iterations of Batman, unabashedly full of himself and not shy about sharing that he believes himself to be the smartest, most competent guy in the room. His ego wholly eclipses his better attributes, a fine gag going back to Jack Benny and earlier.
It�s a consistent sure fire source of humor, but it also drives the character arc of the film where Batman goes too far in driving those closest to him away, including The Joker, with cataclysmic results. Honestly, the closest variation on Batman may be Frank Miller�s Batman from ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN, THE BOY WONDER. It�s not a far step to see this Batman painted yellow and offering Green Lantern a lemonade. Of course, in this context, it�s likely to be embraced. They took a page out ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT when casting the film, with Michael Cera�s Robin being a wonderful contrast to Will Arnett�s Batman. There�s never been a Robin that�s been this innocent and full of wonder at the world of Batman. It�s a caricature, but it�s one built on a foundation of an orphan just needing love and finding it in an unexpected place. The rest of the supporting cast is also very good, albeit a lot of parts feel more like stunts with a line or two of dialogue than actual parts to play.
Billy Dee Williams, for instance, gets little more than a cameo which is surely a wasted opportunity. Doug Benson gets only a couple of lines, but makes the most of them emulating Tom Hardy�s Bane voice. Among those who get more substance, Ralph Fiennes as Alfred is a total pro and certainly giving more than what is necessary, and it�s certainly appreciated by me. Zach Galifianakis is trying too, although I don�t know if it�s so much the performance as the writing, and some expressive animation, that carries the day for him as The Joker. Rosario Dawson is good too, albeit they kind of skirt around all that they could do with her, such as setting up gags involving using statistics to fight crime and then not capitalizing on it, as Barbara Gordon and the fact that Bruce Wayne is smitten with her goes absolutely nowhere. One of the real impressive things that THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE does is embrace the fact that the base of the aesthetic is a bunch of construction blocks and go wild with the imagination.
There�s no doubt that you can find something buried in the background of just about every frame as the team behind this film creates the most imaginative Gotham City since Tim Burton and Anton Furst. And it�s not just empty decoration, the fact that Bruce Wayne�s home is an island and the enormity of the Batcave certainly do represent Batman�s isolation and loneliness well. The downside to that is that the film never, ever, takes more than a few seconds to let the viewer soak any of this in. Even more than THE LEGO MOVIE, you can certainly point to this film being paced for the most ADD viewers with cuts every three seconds or less. The result is that it goes so fast that there�s no way to catch all the little details (for which home video and the pause button may make a more satisfactory experience) and the story ends up stalled at times as the film stops to repeat itself to make sure that the audience is aware of Batman�s faults as a loner and hasn�t missed it in all the freneticism and because the running time
, although short, outstays the plot line at the speed with which they�re going. THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE also eschews the meta-commentary of THE LEGO MOVIE, but instead exists in the world of Batman. There�s nothing wrong with that, but it does chop off some layers that the previous film had. The closest it goes to meta-commentary is by having Batman go up against some of the greatest competing villains from pop culture and having him triumph over them, suggesting he is the preeminent superhero of his time. Batman has been the most changeable of superheroes over the years, and THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE suggests that�s not always easy while embracing all of the strange turns in his history. But, it does it without betraying the core of his character. We�ve seen this story before, Charles Dickens�s A CHRISTMAS CAROL for instance, but using a character as central to pop culture as Batman gives the familiar tale a wonderful pop. Glen Weldon in THE CAPED CRUSADE (read BOF's review of that book HERE) suggests that there�s been a �counter-narrative� brewing that Batman can be fun, not so serious, and for all ages again.