Living near freeways makes people sick. L.A. keeps building next to them anywaySean Spicer’s tragic fall from grace as White House Easter Bunny SXSW may refer international artists to immigration for playing unofficial shows Oh, hey, here’s a clip of Jeff Sessions yelling at Bill Clinton for perjury in 1999 Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson is about to get a ton of pork rectums in the mailSays Hollywood: Toys Are UsThe Duo Behind Lego Movie Goes Dark (But Funny) With The Last Man on Earth After a decade of rule by the Judd Apatow machine, Chris Miller and Phil Lord have quietly built their own burgeoning comedy empire. US Theatrical: Feb 07, 2014US Home Media: Jun 17, 2014 20th All Time, 45th This WeekFranchise: LEGOCharacters on BTVA: 41An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.In the irreverent spirit of fun that made The LEGO® Movie a worldwide phenomenon, the self-described leading man of that ensemble—LEGO Batman—stars in his own big-screen adventure.
But there are big changes brewing in Gotham City, and if he wants to save the city from The Joker’s hostile takeover, Batman may have to drop the lone vigilante thing, try to work with others and maybe, just maybe, learn to lighten up. Will Arnett reprises his starring role from The LEGO Movie as the voice of LEGO Batman, aka Bruce Wayne. Zach Galifianakis (Muppets Most Wanted, the Hangover films) stars as The Joker; Michael Cera (TV’s Arrested Development) as the orphan Dick Grayson; Rosario Dawson (TV’s Daredevil) as Barbara Gordon; and Ralph Fiennes (the Harry Potter films) as Alfred. The LEGO® Batman Movie will be directed by Chris McKay, and produced by Dan Lin, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, and Roy Lee, who worked together on The LEGO Movie. The screenplay is by Seth Grahame-Smith and Chris McKenna & Erik Sommers and Jared Stern & John Whittington, story by Seth Grahame-Smith, based on LEGO Construction Toys and based on characters from DC. Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
“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.