Robin (voiced by Michael Cera), left, and Batman (voiced by Will Arnett) in "The Lego Batman Movie." Photo Credit: DC Comics If you asked Batman what he thinks about spending his nights alone in the Bat Cave, eating microwaved lobster thermidor and watching “Jerry Maguire,” what would he say? That he wiles away his hours reflecting on his lonely life as Gotham City’s premier crime-fighter? On his friendless existence? On his family-free future? That he wants to change his life? “You’ve been watching too many Lifetime movies,” he would say, “and drinking chardonnay.” Which is exactly what he says to his faithful butler, Alfred (voice of Ralph Fiennes), in “The Lego Batman Movie,” which opens Friday, Feb. 10, and makes fun of just about everything, including DC Comics, Warner Bros. and Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror.” The big-screen follow-up to the popular “Lego Movie” of 2014, it’s a story as furiously omnidirectional as its jokes — the targets of which also include the hot-blooded-yet-unspoken bromance simmering between Batman (Will Arnett) and a resurgent Joker (Zach Galafianakis), who wants to free all the archvillains from the Phantom Zone (which is, granted, a Superman thing, but let’s not nitpick).
Also, why does Robin (Michael Cera) seem to gallivant around in his underwear? “I think Chris, Phil and I probably come from the ‘Airplane!’ school of comedy,” said director Chris McKay, referring to “Lego Batman” producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, with whom he wrote and directed the last “Lego” movie. “You want to throw jokes at people as fast as possible. And if one joke doesn’t work, maybe this next one will.” One joke is for a kid, the next one’s for an adult, the next one is for “a Batman nerd like me,” said McKay. For those parents who regard Legos as a kind of kid version of Ikea with better directions, the whole Lego movie aesthetic will be a baffling revelation — of gags that come out of nowhere, digress from the narrative and refer, mostly, to other movies. “There are a couple of experimental jokes that only work if you know joke history,” McKay said. “Idiosyncratic jokes that only a student of comedy might understand.”
Will Arnett, who has a naturally low register and slides into the Christian Bale-Michael Keaton “gravelly whisper” of Batman without much effort, said at Comic-Con this year that his Caped Crusader isn’t really a parody of any Batman in particular, but that he had the benefit of a lot of Batmen. He also admitted that when his Bat character appeared in “The Lego Movie,” he had no idea it would be spun into its own sequel. “I’m a dumb guy,” Arnett said. “I did not see that coming. So when they told me they were going to make a Lego Batman movie, I said ‘Really?’ But it made him happy. “It’s my favorite thing to do.” The plotline is, by design, a familiar one: Batman is facing a league of supervillains led by the Joker, and a new city police commissioner, Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), who thinks that having a masked vigilante as Gotham’s leading means of crime prevention is perhaps not the best idea. All this on top of the lonely life Batman leads, surrounded by no one but Alfred — until he inadvertently adopts a wide-eyed orphan of uncertain sexuality named Dick Grayson, who becomes — of course — Robin, the Boy Wonder.
What exactly is the Batman-Robin relationship all about? The insinuations may not be true. But they’re certainly funny. Generally speaking, “The Lego Batman Movie” never stops — not with the jokes, and certainly not with the visuals, flying at the audience’s face. Which is kind of a joke in itself. “It’s a Batman movie, so it’s visually dynamic and cinematic and as big as an experience as we could possibly make it,” said McKay. “We wanted it to feel operatic, so I asked everybody from the production designer Grant Freckelton to the animators to step up our game. It’s an action-themed movie and I wanted it to feel like a Michael Mann or Michael Bay movie, with the action sequences and all. But in the characters, I wanted to observe human behavior very carefully and find the little grace notes that make you feel these people are alive — thinking, feeling, that there’s a lot going on there. And the animation teams did an amazing job, despite a shortage of time, and a lot of scrutiny from the studio.”
Uh-oh, it looks like your Internet Explorer is out of date. For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now. We found 0 results for toys-games-beer-the-outrageously-fun-drinking-game/21965709. Please try another search or browse our recommendations below.Movie ReviewSteve Butler understands small-town ways. He may be a mover and a shaker with a natural gas leasing company now, but he hasn't lost touch with his roots. And that's really what makes him so good at his job. You see, Steve has his own story, his own experience of seeing a small middle-American hometown shrivel up and blow away. He knows the pain, the feelings of desperation. So when he drives into a tiny farm town with his sales partner Sue, he's certain that they're bringing something akin to hope to the people living there. Sure, he and Sue have to be pitchmen. They put on the boots and flannel. They joke and shuffle and speak the local lingo. They roll out the same old spiel of promised riches and new beginnings.
But leasing drilling rights from the owners of these dying farms is at least a way to give the people a little something to avoid an otherwise inevitable financial ruin. He's not a bad guy. Of course, there are those towns like McKinley. It seemed like a burg that was going to easily tumble for their talk at first. The town official took his pittance of a bribe and fell in line. Folks were eager to cash in. Then some old teacher had to stand up at the community meeting and ramble on about the dangers of fracking: the injected chemicals, the poisoned water table, the court cases. And an environmental activist blows into town—chummying up to the locals and buyin' 'em beer. Before you know it everybody's talking about dead cows and fetid fields. Don't these yokels understand? Steve's on their side!Positive Even though Steve and Sue are quickly established as the "big corporation" bad guys, they're still shown to have their virtues. Sue is a loving mom. Steve is a nice and earnest guy who seems to really believe he can help the townspeople he encounters.
In fact, he follows that earnestness to the point of quitting his job when he discovers some dishonest corporate shenanigans that his company (Global Crosspower Solutions) has pulled. Frank, a retired big-tech guy who teaches at the local school, also shows his earnest stripes. He raises questions about the dangers of the hydraulic fracturing process not to gain attention but because he truly wants to protect his community. Some locals lend Steve a hand setting up a fair.Spiritual On open mic night at the town bar, Sue stands up and haltingly sings the Hank Williams song "I Saw the Light," including the lyrics, "I wandered so aimless, life filled with sin/I wouldn't let my dear Savior in/Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night/Praise the Lord, I saw the light."Sexual Steve has several flirting interactions with Alice, a grade school teacher he meets at the bar. And he jokes about being a stripper. He wakes up on her couch after getting drunk, and while he thinks he might have slept wtih her the night before, she assures him he didn't.
Later, Alice and the environmental activist Dustin kiss in the hallway of her school—and the implication is that they had been even more intimate the night before.Violent In the midst of a heated argument, an inebriated local punches Steve in the face. Dustin makes a number of flyers and posters sporting images of cow carcasses.Crude Profane About 25 f-words and 20 s-words mix in with multiple uses of "d‑‑n," "a‑‑," "h‑‑‑" and "b‑‑ch." God's and Jesus' names are abused around 20 times total (God's combined with "d‑‑n" four or five times). Sue flips her middle finger at someone.Drug Alcohol According to this film, the struggling farmers of middle America are a hard-drinking lot. We see many of the townsfolk drowning their woes in beer and hard liquor at the bar. Several end up staggeringly drunk, including Steve. Steve is drawn into a bar game called "Absolute Madness" where he's throws back eight shots in quick succession. The next morning he wakes with no memory of the evening and a blazing hangover.
Alice tells him he kissed her just before he threw up. Steve and Sue drink wine with dinner at Frank's house.Other ElementsSteve appears to know he's lying when he promises property owners that they'll make millions from their lease to his company. And he hands out a bribe to grease the town's wheels the bit. We eventually find out that Global pulled a big scam on the community in order to sway their opinions. But the locals aren't wholly unfamiliar with scams; it turns out that the Absolute Madness drinking game is regularly pulled on passing businessmen to get them drunk enough to empty their wallets. That's just part of the sociopolitical puzzle too. Even though the movie's creators see the small-town heartland of America as a place of precious beauty, they don't seem to see the residents of that slice of the country with the same loving eye—assigning to them "qualities" such as being greedy, manipulative, gulible and disgruntled; they're generally heavy drinkers and foul-mouthed.
ConclusionEvery piece of drama has some kind of message it wants to convey or question it wants to raise. Even those pieces that don't seem like they do. But some are more obviously deliberate about things than others. And Promised Land (written by co-stars Matt Damon and John Krasinski) knows exactly what it wants to sell in pretty much exactly the same way Steve Butler knows what he needs to sell every time he hits a new town. The film never challenges the supposition that gas, oil and coal industries are inherently more dangerous and destructive than they're worth. But short of reporting that, or futilely trying to unilaterally settle the natural gas fracking debate, I'll conclude this review by looking at how this film's message is delivered, rather than obsessing over what message it's delivering: There's a key moment when the environmental activist, Dustin, visits a middle school classroom to try to explain his view of things to the farming community's kids. He colorfully weaves a tale of big city oil and gas companies that want to come in and drill for gas under their farms through some "crazy sounding thing they call fracking."