Cooking for King Pig Building Red - timelapse Take the Piggy Smash Challenge From left, Benny, voiced by Charlie Day, Batman, voiced by Will Arnett, Vitruvius, voiced by Morgan Freeman, Wyldstyle, voiced by Elizabeth Banks and Unikitty, voiced by Alison Brie, in a scene from "The Lego Movie." To create and preserve, or to destroy and rebuild? As a child, you probably struggled with these profound impulses while messing around with Legos. That tension lies at the heart of "The Lego Movie," which doesn't at all feel like the extended toy commercial you might be fearing. Instead, it's the smartest, funniest and most dazzlingly inventive children's movie to come along in years. Computer-animated in a stop-motion style -- with more than 15 million individual "bricks" -- "The Lego Movie" unfolds in a bright, multicolored world of those familiar dotted blocks and little yellow figures with U-shaped hands. Among them is Emmet (voice of Chris Pratt), a happily conformist construction worker who uncovers a dark plot: The tyrant Lord Business (Will Ferrell) plans to glue the entire Lego universe together, and only the Piece of Resistance can stop him.
If Emmett wants to fight for unfettered creativity, he must throw away his instruction booklets and become a visionary Master Builder. Directed by Chris Lord and Phil Miller ("Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs"), who also helped write the screenplay, "The Lego Movie" shines on almost every level. The details are enchanting: Legos are used to create everything, including water, smoke and explosions; it's a brilliant collaboration between the virtual animation studio Animal Logic ("Happy Feet") and the Claymation craftsman Chris McKay ("Robot Chicken"). The characters sparkle, too, particularly the puppyish Emmet and his punky love interest, Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks). "The Lego Movie" also allows two legendary voices to get silly: Morgan Freeman, as the nonchalant guru Vitruvius, and Liam Neeson, pulling triple duty as the two-faced Good Cop/Bad Cop (and his dad, Pa Cop), are having an audibly excellent time. Will Arnett plays Batman as an insufferable Goth-rock poseur. If anything, "The Lego Movie" is the rare children's movie that suffers from overambition.
It's crammed a little too full of ideas, meta humor and conflicting narrative themes. There's also a death scene that, while played partly for laughs, may startle young viewers. All of that, however, still adds up to just a quibble. "The Lego Movie" is as much fun as, well, 15 million Legos. PLOT In a conformist Lego world, one small figure fights for unfettered creativity. RATING PG (action, some Lego violence) CAST Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Morgan Freeman, Elizabeth Banks BOTTOM LINE One of the best kids' movies in years, with dazzling animation and a sparkling voice cast. It's more fun than you can shake a brick at. Sign up for Newsday's Entertainment newsletter Get the latest on celebs, TV and more. 2014 film, TV, music and theater awardsLEGO Batman is flying high after a strong opening. Though it didn’t quite match its predecessor, it still managed to win the weekend and top Fifty Shades Darker and John Wick: Chapter Two. The success of the film is hardly surprsing.
Not only did The LEGO Movie do well at the box office while impressing critics and fans, but Batman is one of the strongest brands around. Like its predecessor, audiences around the world have been loving Will Arnett’s take on The Batman, and the movie is benefitting from mostly positive reviews. The LEGO franchise is occupying a particular niche of action-comedies as its format allows for absurd amounts of chaos and tons of cameos from some of the most popular properties out there. And despite Emmet and Wyldstyle’s absence, LEGO Batman will still have an impact on LEGO Movie 2 when it arrives in 2019. Part of LEGO Batman‘s appeal was the slew of charatcers introduced, many from Batman’s Rogues Gallery. Though a lot of supervillain cameos had to be cut, Billy Dee Williams saw justice served as he was able to play Two-Face decades after portraying Harvey Dent in Tim Burton’s Batman. Even better, the movie had a blast introducing all sorts of obscure DC Comic villains from its decades-long history.
Aside from the action and all the Easter eggs, one of the highlights of the film was Batman’s interactions with his super-computer, dubbed ‘Puter. Now, thanks to an over-the-air update to Siri, you too have the power of ‘Puter in your pocket. Batman News has the scoop on a new set of jokes hidden within Siri that come straight from LEGO Batman. Check some of them out in the gallery below. Don’t worry if you haven’t updated your phone in awhile, as these new prompts from Siri are already inside your iPhone. Just activate Siri and say “Hey, ‘Puter,” and you’ll get one of the jokes listed above. The most fun aspect of the whole thing is that the voice of Siri and that of ‘Puter are one in the same. Unfortunately, Susan Bennett, the voice actor responsible for what became Siri, wasn’t hired for the film. Instead, Siri is actually listed on IMDb for ‘Puter’s voice, meaning an actual iPhone was used to create the lines. All told, LEGO Batman is another hit in the growing franchise.
Like The LEGO Movie before it, there’s likely a lot you don’t know about the film and its production. The dedication and nerdiness poured into the film certainly shows, and it will help the movie continue to grow at the box office. While no sequel has been announced yet, it seems like a safe bet. If nothing else, the LEGO Movie franchise will have a long shelf life. The LEGO Batman Movie release date: Feb 10, 2017The LEGO Ninjago Movie release date: Sep 22, 2017The LEGO Movie 2/LEGO Movie Sequel release date: Feb 8, 2019Sauce FunniesFunnies MemesMemes QuotesHumorLego Movie QuotesThe Lego MovieGiggles 113Wasn'T ListeningDorky ThingsForwardMy life in a pic. I saw this and I'm watching the Lego movie, and this scene…Unlike its predecessor, “The LEGO Movie,” “The LEGO Batman Movie” is about half as funny as it should be. More reviews by Tom Tangney I’d estimate the movie has about 30 minutes worth of smart and sassy one-liners stretched over a 104-minute running time.
That makes for a movie that is sometimes hilarious and sometimes tedious, with tedium winning out in the end. But there still is a lot to recommend about LEGO Batman, who was the sharpest and snarkiest character in the original animated film. He ramps up the snark here but the film also takes him down a peg or two by daring to psychoanalyze him. Or at least socialize him. And that’s pretty funny. LEGO Batman insists that Batman works alone. But he also plays alone and that makes for a lonely LEGO Batman. And his ever-loyal butler, Alfred, takes notice. Despite his best denials, LEGO Batman misses his dead parents terribly and has to come home every day to face a gargantuan but empty house. Lego Batman spends most of the movie pushing people way from him: Robin, who he accidentally adopts; Barbara, the new police commissioner who wants to work with, not against, him; and even the Joker doesn’t get his due. Of course, Lego Batman eventually learns he does need people and that message is so relentlessly driven home that the last quarter of the movie practically turns into a Care Bears film.