As gateway drugs go, “The Lego Batman Movie” is pretty irresistible. It’s silly without being truly strange or crossing over into absurdity. Along the way it pulls off a nifty balancing act: It gives the PG audience its own Batman movie (it’s a superhero starter kit) and takes swipes at the subgenre, mostly by gently mocking the seriousness that has become a deadening Warner Bros. default. “The Lego Batman Movie” can’t atone for a movie as grindingly bad as the studio’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” which stars Ben Affleck as the Gotham City brooder, but at least someone on that lot gets the joke. The cast and crew of “The Lego Batman Movie” sustain that joke admirably, filling in its 104-minute running time with loads of busy action, deadpan humor, visual comedy, reflexive bits and an overfamiliar story line. It features the usual cavalcade of marquee-ready talent (Rosario Dawson, Conan O’Brien, Mariah Carey), the comic and less so, but owes much of its pleasure and juice to Will Arnett, who voices Batman.
The movie puts a goofy spin on the Batman saga, but it squeezes its brightest, most sustained comedy from Mr. Arnett’s hypnotically sepulchral voice, which conveys the entire bat ethos — the Sturm und Drang, the darkness and aloneness, the resoluteness and echoiness — in vocal terms. It’s blissfully self-serious, near-Wagnerian and demented.Mr. Arnett anchors the movie, though he’s nicely book-ended by Michael Cera, as the excitable pip-squeaker Dick Grayson, and Ralph Fiennes, who voices Alfred, Bruce Wayne’s trusted butler and operational aide-de-camp. Some of the wittiest moments happen early, before the story machinery starts humming, and involve Batman-Bruce wandering his mansion in his fetishlike mask and a silky red bathrobe, nuking his lobster dinner and giggling solo at “Jerry Maguire.” If Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” cycle suggests that Batman teeters on actual madness, “The Lego Batman Movie” ups the ante by insinuating that he has fully settled into near-Howard Hughes eccentricity.
Not too much nuttiness, mind you, just enough to keep the jokes pinging and zinging, at least until the story amps up. Most of that involves the Joker (Zach Galifianakis), who’s not the transgressive opposition but a whining smiler desperately yearning for Batman’s attention. This isn’t as funny or engaging as the filmmakers seem to think, partly because a child-friendly Joker can’t have the scariness or anarchic threat that distinguishes this character’s better iterations. (He can’t compete partly because he’s nowhere near as loopy as this Batman.) Mostly, the Joker is the master of ceremonies for the rest of the villainous horde, a motley crew of creatures that includes Harley Quinn (Jenny Slate), who’s mostly a trauma trigger for “Suicide Squad,” another supersplat.As an object, “The Lego Batman Movie” looks as good as its predecessor, “The Lego Movie.” This one is similarly shiny and bright, though sometimes as teasingly dark as Batman. Even when the story drags, which it does as the action grows frenetic, the shiny and bright bits catch the eye.
As in the first movie, the character design does much of the most meaningful work because it conveys part of what’s enjoyable about Legos, including their smooth-to-the-touch plastic surfaces and knobby bits (studs in Lego lingo), which you can almost feel in your hands as you watch. One of the satisfactions of Legos is their touch sensation, a sense memory that’s imprinted on brains, too. Basing movies on kiddie playthings is ingenious: It turns every Lego brick into a Rosebud sled, a portal into childhood. That makes resistance fairly futile, or at least tough, especially when the crew ushering you into the past is up to the task, as is the case here. Chris McKay directed this one, working from a jammed script by Seth Grahame-Smith, Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Jared Stern and John Whittington. (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who directed “The Lego Movie,” helped produce “The Lego Batman Movie.”) The whole vibe is, as the first “Lego” movie insisted with its deliriously catchy anthem, awesome, so, relax, enjoy the show, go with the flow.
I mean, who hates Legos? Isn’t that like hating childhood? Well, of course not, though that gets to what’s frustrating about these movies, which are so insistently good-natured and relentlessly hyped that it feels almost churlishly old-school raising even modest objections to the fact that — in addition to being, you know, fun — they’re also commercials. It’s not new or news that movies have long sold stuff, including studio tie-ins and toys, as Walt Disney explained by example decades ago, though, like Pixar, he was also in the business of storytelling and not merely corporate-brand storytelling and building. Certainly there are worse things in life and definitely worse movies, including the “Transformers” blockbusters, which sell both toys and war.So, as far as commercials go, “The Lego Batman Movie” is just swell. But because its primary function, outside of making bank, is to extend two brands — Lego and Batman — it can’t help but disappoint. One reason that the first “Lego” movie worked as well as it did is that its novelty and trippier moments conveyed a sense of play and unboundedness, which is part of the appeal of Legos themselves.
(It’s the better movie and ad.) The Batman story, by contrast, proves to be a prison, one its creators never escape. They toss around the superstuff and giggle at the legend, but they’re finally confined by the superhero story and its corporate sanctity. It’s a bottom-line bummer.The Lego Batman MovieDirector - Chris McKayCast - Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Ralph Fiennes, Rosario Dawson, Zach Galifianakis, Mariah Carey, Channing Tatum, SiriRating - 4/5For a children’s movie – one that is essentially about plastic toys pounding each other into the Phantom Zone, one that somehow finds a way to make a quick joke at the expense of Mahatma Gandhi (God knows how they let it pass), and also proudly includes a Z-list villain named Condiment King (he shoots ketchup and mustard out of special guns, duh) – The Lego Batman Movie begins, and ends, on a pretty poignant note.It was supposed to be nothing more than a nerdy diversion, a gravelly-voiced filler starring Will Arnett before the main, Affleck-shaped attraction.
But it turned out to be so much more. It isn’t without its flaws – there’s a substantial portion that lags like it’s carrying the weight of Tom Hardy’s Bane on its back – but for the most part, it’s a dizzyingly colourful, and surprisingly touching little movie that can chuck jokes at your face with the velocity (and precision) of a dozen batarangs.Like its predecessor, the unlikeliest hit of 2014, The Lego Movie, this one too comes with the heavy baggage that makes it seem like a cold-hearted cash grab, a shameless attempt to sell more toys to unsuspecting kids. But there lies the challenge behind these movies – to create something, from nothing – hopefully, without having to sell your soul in the process. That they made something more than just a diverting, empty spectacle designed to distract children for a couple of hours, but a heartfelt film about friendship and family and loneliness and heroism is worth celebrating, isn’t it? Especially if you’re a Batman fan, which, basically, is this movie’s target demographic.
The film opens with an excellent gag that pokes fun at The Dark Knight, which, to put it politely, is the best damn Batman film of all time – and perhaps one of the best films ever made. Nothing, it seems, is sacred in the glowing eyes of Lego Batman. In hindsight, that Gandhi joke should’ve been an indication.To take potshots at its rival Marvel is easy, which, make no mistake, it does. Twice - and with all the subtlety of one of The Joker’s especially far-fetched schemes. But to make fun of family, that is where it gets tricky. On one hand, every Batman film that has ever been made, and every version of the character has ever been dreamt up, drawn, or put on film, is like a cousin to this one – From the hilariously camp ‘60s version, to Christopher Nolan’s monumental trilogy, to Zack Snyder’s brooding DCEU – Lego Batman, the crime fighting vigilante and heavy metal rapper that he is, holds no punches. And this, at its core, is what the movie is about. Who is Batman, and what does he mean to you.
He is such an iconic character that the movie makes no attempt to invite novices to the party – it just assumes that you’d come prepared. For decades, his malleability has been harnessed into some truly terrific stories, and The Lego Batman Movie has found a familiar, yet exciting way to further his legacy, without ever biting the hand that feeds – or, in this case, the wing that shields. Possibly, there has been no Batman movie that celebrates the character, every silly version of it, with the sort of passion that this one does. It finds Batman’s essence, beneath his leathery cowl - and also of his equally iconic nemesis, The Joker, played by The Hangover’s Zach Galifianakis here.At the end of the amazing 2011 Batman video game Arkham City, if you’re patient enough to sit through the credits, you can hear a song playing in the background. It’s a love song, sung by the Joker, for Batman. It’s a stunning closer to what has to be one of the best, most honest depictions of the Joker-Batman relationship ever – right up there with Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum comic and The Dark Knight.