The Best Movies, TV, and Documentaries Coming to Netflix This MarchWatch Out for Those Toxic Heavy Metals Ski Gear Deal Season Starts Now: Spyder Blowout Sale At Gilt Until Midnight Tomorrow Ditch the Treadmill for These Superior Cardio Machines 72 Hours With Nintendo Switch Are You Fitter Than Justice Ginsburg? Try Her Hardcore Workout A Navy SEAL's Guide To Reaching Your Full Potential 62% of Idaho’s Land Is Public: Here’s Why Citizens Are Fighting to Keep it that Way 25 Kids Movies Adults Will Actually Enjoy So it's movie night at the house and you're picking something to watch with the kids. You can't tolerate another night of purple dinosaurs or Disney princesses, and they're not really interested in that History Channel documentary on the Battle of Dunkirk or your Super Bowl highlight tapes. Some sort of middle ground is needed — a selection of movies that's appropriate and engaging for kids or young teens that you'd want to see as well.
RELATED: The 21 Best Sports Movies of All-Time Good news: There's now a handful of choices that both you and your offspring will dig — the last decade or so has seen a virtual renaissance of kid-friendly movies that will neither give you diabetes or drive you up the wall. And ever since Pixar upped the ante on animated features, you no longer have to sit through cloying cartoons from the House of Mouse. That's not even taking account of the fact that, thanks to streaming services and the abundance of DVD/Blu-ray reissues, you can now find the movies you grew up loving at the drop of a hat as well. The sky's the limit. We've put together a quick list for what to watch with your son or daughter: 25 films ranging from vintage Saturday-matinee adventures to triumph-of-the-underdog sports movies and comedies hilarious for all ages. Because every kid wants to share the experience of seeing a movie with their parents — and every kid deserves to know the joy of a good old-fashioned Rudy slow clap.
It was a movie based on a Danish toy line that's basically plastic masonry for children… really, how cool could it be? A hell of a lot, it turned out, as well as one of the most subversive movies to come out of a Hollywood studio in years. Chris Pratt's happy little everydude has to take on an evil corporate overlord who wants to keep Legoland locked down; quicker than you can sing "Everything Is Awesome!" everyone from Star Wars characters to superheroes drop by to crack jokes and kick ass. It's a candy-colored lesson on the value of anti-conformity — no assembly required.Says Hollywood: Toys Are Us The 'Lego Movie' Sequel Is Going to Be a Giant Space Musical Perfect for Parties: Make This Block-tastic Batman Treat The Lego Movie: I'm Batman The Lego Movie: Will Arnett On The Lego Batman Watch All the Greatest Highlights from Comic-Con 2013 We Can't Wait for 2014! Watch: Someone Built the Real-Life Double Decker Couch from 'The Lego Movie'
Animation Buzz: Three 'Lego Movies' Get Release Dates; 'Storks' Casts Andy Samberg News Briefs: Ryan Gosling in 'Haunted Mansion'; New 'Jurassic World' Photo and First Clip News Briefs: Mysterious 'Jurassic World' Book Photo; 'Lego' Directors Touted for 'The Flash' or 'Ghostbusters' News Briefs: Jessica Chastain Joins Chris Hemsworth in 'The Huntsman'; 'Birdman' Action Figure TV Spot The 'Lego Movie' Directors Reveal Some Awesome Sequel Details 14 Films That Show Kids How to Handle Disappointment Costumes Inspired by This Year's Family FilmsLEGO® Minifigures - The LEGO Movie SeriesWarning!FIND MORE PRODUCTS LIKE THISMinifiguresTHE LEGO® MOVIE™Collect every mystery minifigure in The LEGO Movie Series!By As Batman tells us, all important movies begin with a black screen. In spite of its opening blackness, “The Lego Batman Movie” doesn’t strive to be an “important” movie, and for that we can all be thankful. Instead it’s good-natured, silly fun that will appeal to both kids and adults.
Director Chris McKay exhibits impeccable comic timing. Frenetic scenes of humorous action are shot through with rapid-fire dialogue that pokes fun at the Batman franchise. (Could there really be a villain named Polka-Dot Man?) These scenes are punctuated by the sort of uncomfortably long, quiet shots that made “The Office” famous. The results made me laugh out loud in the theater more than once. The entire movie holds together tighter than a pair of 1X2 Lego plates.Is “The Lego Batman Movie” as good as the first Lego movie? “The Lego Movie” skewered our culture of consumerism, with a hero who drinks expensive coffee and likes pop music because he’s told to. In “The Lego Batman Movie,” Batman brags that he’s a billionaire who doesn’t pay taxes, and when trouble starts in Gotham, someone in the crowd announces he’s going to start looting. That’s the extent of cultural critique.The original movie also posed interesting philosophical questions. Where does genius come from?
Do those geniuses have the right to make and remake the world however they see fit? How can we navigate the competing ideals of being an individual and working with others toward a common goal? To what extent do we have free will, or are we all just playthings in the hand of God? The original Lego movie addressed these kinds of questions through the Lego-ness of the world. The fact that their universe was made up of little plastic bricks was an integral aspect of the storyline and its themes.Lego Batman pays a bit of lip service to this original concept. He mentions a couple of times that he’s a “master builder” and that Lego Gotham City is built on flimsy plastic plates, but for the most part the Lego-ness of the movie is nonessential. It adds a bit of color (although we all know Batman only works in black, and sometimes very, very dark gray) to a standard animated superhero movie for kids.This Lego movie is about clicking together the two Batmans who exist in the DC mythos. On the one hand, we have Batman the Dark Knight.
He’s a loner vigilante who lurks in shadows and beats bad guys to a bloody pulp. His Gotham is gritty and evil, and always on the verge of descending into utter chaos.On the other hand, we have Batman the Caped Crusader, who leads a loyal “family” of bat-themed superheroes against a clownish rogues’ gallery of supervillains who are more interested in fighting Batman than in committing crimes.Batman’s dissociative disorder isn’t entirely the fault of DC Comics. We can blame government interference, too. In the 1940s, both Batman and Joker were dark characters involved in violent stories. By the 1950s, Congress had become concerned about the children, so the industry created the “Comics Code Authority” to ban darkness, violence, and horror from comic books. This forced Batman to lighten up in the 1950s and ‘60s, culminating in Adam West’s campy TV series. With the loosening of regulations in the ‘70s, Batman began his return to a darker shade of black.In the original Lego movie, Will Arnett’s Batman perfectly satirized this darker version of Batman, and in this movie, he picks up where he left off.
After the black opening, the movie launches into “edgy music” that Batman’s voiceover tells us “makes studio executives and parents nervous.” Someone resurrect the Comics Code! Batman is the Dark Knight, a brooding loner who tells people he doesn’t do relationships.Unfortunately for him, he’s the Dark Knight living in the Caped Crusader’s Gotham City. Everyone wants to have a relationship with him. Barbara Gordon, the new police commissioner and soon-to-be Batgirl, wants to cooperate. Dick Grayson, who will become Robin, wants Batman to be his father. The Joker needs Batman to admit that their battles are special to him. These emotional demands prove too much for someone with intimacy issues who doesn’t play well with others.This plot isn’t particularly original. The loner learns to trust other people and teaches us that if we all work together we can build something special. In this case, it’s literally build something—it is a Lego movie, after all.While the original Lego movie satirized our lifestyles, this movie good-naturedly pokes fun at all the superhero tropes.
“The Lego Batman Movie” might have been a slightly more interesting movie if it had used humor to critique our current glut of superhero films. Instead, this animated parody whimsically and joyfully embraces the superhero phenomenon.Measuring “The Lego Batman Movie” against “The Lego Movie” is probably an unfair comparison. The only things this movie has in common with the original are Arnett and colorful bricks. A better comparison would be to measure this movie against the other recent DC superhero movies from Warner Bros. Is this movie as good as those?“The Lego Batman Movie” buries every film in Warner Brothers’ “DC Extended Universe.” I don’t know if it’s the superhero movie I deserve, but it’s certainly the one I needed after sitting through the tedious “Man of Steel,” the suffocating “Batman V Superman,” and the joyless “Suicide Squad.”I hope Zack Snyder, the “creative” force behind DC’s plodding films, learns some lessons from Lego Batman.