Animated movies in 3-D are box-office bonanzas, and The Lego Movie is no exception. George Clooney's Monuments Men should prepare to be shot down. The brightly-imagined Lego Movie is also a wickedly smart and funny free-for-all, and sassy enough to shoot well-aimed darts at corporate branding. Satirical subversion in family entertainment is an unexpected treat, especially in a movie that also functions as a triumph of product placement. For plot, we get Chris Pratt voicing a block of plastic called Emmet Brickowski, a construction worker who follows the rules until he's enlisted to rebel against President Business (Will Ferrell) to take down the forces against spontaneity so we can all create our own universe, preferably with Legos. Or something like that. The movie, designed with flair to spare by Chris Miller and Philip Lord, the creators of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, has so much energy it sometimes spins out of control. But the fun is nonstop. The movie's irresistible theme song, by Tegan and Sara, is "Everything Is Awesome."
In this movie, everything really is.'The Lego Batman Movie' Review: Welcome to the Funniest Dark Knight Movie Ever Will Arnett and a who's who of superhero toys turn this 'Lego Movie' spin-off into a superfun time 'The Lego Batman Movie' sends-up comic-book movies and the Batman mythology in one fell swoop – Peter Travers on the funniest Dark Knight film ever. Is it possible that every movie would be better with Legos? Suicide Squad, for sure. And, of course, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. How do I know? Because The Lego Batman Movie, animated with love and lunacy, is the funniest Caped Crusader movie ever. Will Arnett may have found the role of his career voicing the growly Dark Knight as a delusional, ego-centric freak willing and eager to mine laughs out of his own psychosis, Hollywood's plastic soul and every Bruce-Wayne/Batman from Adam West to Ben Affleck. The kids are gonna love it, even if the inside jokes, Freudian subtext and subversive jabs at corporate America sail right over their towheads.
As for the, grown-ups, they'll eat up the antics of this newly lighthearted DC vigilante. "I have aged phenomenally," he beams. And for the under-10 crowd – pampered with poopy-level sight gags and "wanna-get-nuts" action – everything is PG awesome. If any shadow hangs over this enterprise, it's 2014's The Lego Movie, which got there first and struck creative gold in the madly creative hands of co-directors/co-writers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. That team is gone now, off to make a Han Solo-centered Star Wars movie, and their cheeky irreverence is much missed in Gotham City. But Chris McKay steps in ready to party. And since McKay was animation director and editor on The Lego Movie, he already knows the drill. It begins in the dark: "All important movies start with a black screen," explains Arnett's Batman, satirizing the comic-book universe in one fell voiceover swoop. It would have been funnier if Deadpool hadn't beaten it to the punch, but still.) The plot, cooked up by more writers than I care to type, kicks in as Batman the loner is confronted by the Joker (hilariously voiced by Zach Galifianakis), the surprisingly sensitive arch-villain who wants the dude in the mask to admit that they "complete" each other.
Rattled, Batman zaps the Joker into the Phantom Zone, a kind of iCloud for super-baddies (including Sauron, King Kong, the Wicked Witch, Dracula, Godzilla, Lord Voldemort and Agent Smith from The Matrix). Naturally, there's a breakout, with the likes of The Riddler (Conan O'Brien), Harley Quinn (Jenny Slater), and Two-Face (Billy Dee Williams) joining forces. Can this masked orphan, who can't get over the murder of his parents, defeat them alone? How long do you think this dude can sit alone in his Lego Batcave eating microwaved Lego lobster thermidor before he realizes he needs a surrogate family to help him? So come on down Alfred (Ralph Fiennes), Wayne's butler and resident father figure, and Dick Grayson (Michael Cera), the adopted son who's soon running around in a Halloween costume and calling himself Robin. "He's not my son," insists Batman. "It's even weirder if he's not," says new police commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson, priceless), also tops in the sass department.
He wants to call her Batgirl. "How about I call you Batboy?" she replies. As the mayhem commences, the movie spins out of control in ways the first Lego movie did not. It's easy to get distracted with all these pieces flying around and never quite connecting into a coherent whole. Don't obsess over the rough edges. The Lego Batman Movie rises on its own goofball spirits. Wanna get nuts and shake your sillies out? This is the place to do it.Oscar season: A time of glitz and glamor as Hollywood gathers to celebrate its finest offerings of the year. If you're Peter Travers, however, it's a time of unquenchable rage. With nominations arriving this morning, Rolling Stone's fearless movie critic has just three words for the folks at the Academy: "Damn you, Oscar!" Oscars 2015: 'Birdman,' 'Boyhood' Lead Nominations Richard Linklater: About a 'Boyhood' The Soaring, Superheroic Making of 'Birdman' Once again, this year's list of nominees was riddled with glaring omissions, chief among them Ava DuVernay's getting snubbed for Best Director for her work on Selma.
While the Civil Rights-era drama scored a Best Picture nod, Travers points out that the Academy had the chance to nominate the first ever black woman for Best Director in its 87 year history. "And what do you say?" "'Oh no, it's one of the best pictures, but nobody directed it — she didn't do anything at all!'" Equally egregious was the absence of Selma star David Oyelowo. Despite garnering universal acclaim for his portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr., the British actor was left off the Best Actor category in favor of, as Travers puts it, "the usual white guys." Indeed, it was a bad year for black and female filmmakers and performers, but Travers says that youth was also noticeably absent from this year's nominees. Travers highlights several fantastic performers that didn't get a look including Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler, Chadwick Boseman in the James Brown biopic Get on Up and Miles Teller in Whiplash. Capping of this year's Oscar controversies is perhaps one of the most surprising: The snub of the beloved The Lego Movie for Best Animated Feature.