The Lego Movie was such a surprisingly smart, funny and uplifting animation it seemed a shame that writers and directors Phil Miller and Chris Lord weren’t involved in the Batman spinoff. However, Chris McKay and his team of writers have done a marvellous job at delivering the same zippy energy of a child excitedly playing with their toys in a film that turns the tropes of a romantic comedy into a love story between hero and villain. There’s also lot more going on with the obnoxious and arrogant Batman we came to know and adore in the original film (voiced by the brilliant Will Arnett), forced to overcome his greatest fear in order to save his beloved Gotham City. It opens with a shimmering action sequence that sums up the plot of every superhero movie within about ten minutes, in which we meet the multitude of villains who Batman has faced along the years. Of course, that includes the ultimate one in The Joker (Zach Galifianakis), who is sick and tired of Batman not admitting his true feelings about how much he hates him.
It’s just really playing on his mind, so when The Joker confronts Batman about it, in keeping with his loner status he flatly refuses to take part in any kind of relationship. Utterly dejected, The Joker (with a glorious cartoon boohoo face) comes up with a cunning plan involving the Phantom Zone to force him to fess up. Meanwhile the narrative focuses in on Batman in his down time, where he spends a lot of his day watching romantic comedies such as Jerry Maguire and Serendipity. The sequences where Batman is alone in his mansion possess all the charm of those playful Adam and Joe sketches where they reimagined highly acclaimed films with their action figures. Batman humming to himself while he microwaves his favourite meal of lobster thermidor is particularly hilarious. Bruce Wayne also accidentally adopts an orphan in the form of Dick Grayson (aka Robin, played by Michael Cera, who nails sweet and emphatic) due to being so distracted by the sight of Barbara Gordon at her inauguration as new commissioner.
The designers are tasked with visually summoning the spirits of the many incarnations of Batman and do so with vivid flair. At Gordon’s ceremony they gracefully nod to the snowfall and carnivalesque ambience of Burton’s caped crusader and throughout the film they pay so much care and attention to the changing appearance and personas of Batman over the years. Barbara Gordon’s incredible efficiency leaves Batman with too much time on his hands, leading to an existential crisis of sorts. Coerced by Alfred, he teams up with Robin to act as a father figure but instead acts like a jerk and uses him instead. Their partnership leads to an excellent run of meticulously written and giggle inducing jokes about loneliness and the strong silent superhero archetype. The star studded voice cast of good guys are joined by a stellar troupe of bad guys with Warner Brothers allowing the screenwriters to gleefully raid their back catalogue of behemoth blockbusters, which we won’t spoil here.
This spin-off is jam-packed full of belly-laughs for both adults and kids and loads of amusing references to the DC Universe (along with some good-humoured digs at Marvel) for comic fans. Though it doesn’t feature a song to rival The Lego Movie’s ‘Everything is Awesome’ it does cannily play off the same knowing humour that so winningly won us over first time around.‘The Lego Movie’ shouldn’t have been nearly as good as it was. The product placement pop culture extravaganza could have been a wearily commercial enterprise designed to sell expensive pieces of plastic, but turned out to be a wonderful explosion of creativity and comedy instead. Now the scene-stealing Bat-star of that film has his own spinoff. Again, this shouldn’t have worked. There was a Batman movie not even a year ago and this one is even more commercially driven. Somehow, ‘The Lego Batman Movie’ has more style, spark and love for the character than his massive and painfully serious battle with Superman.
Here’s another impossible truth: The movie essentially does what Joel Schumacher hoped to achieve with his take on the franchise, only does it well. Basically, this is a version of ‘Batman & Robin’ that’ll be loved even by those who loathed ‘Batman & Robin’. It’s another Lego movie miracle, if not quite as delightful as the first. ‘The Lego Batman Movie’ opens by announcing itself as a parody of the dark and gritty superhero blockbusters that Warner Bros. is cranking out alongside these wacky animated productions. Over a black screen, Will Arnett’s growling Caped Crusader talks about how all serious movies start with a black screen and comments on the way even the production company logos are dark and brooding. From there, the Joker (Zach Galifianakis) unleashes a dastardly plan involving almost every single Batman villain from Two-Face (a sadly underused Billy Dee Williams, despite some brilliant in-joke casting) to Orca and Condiment Man. Batman defeats the Joker (naturally), but really irritates him by saying that he doesn’t consider him a true mortal enemy.
After that, we see how lonely the Caped Crusader has become in his toy-filled mansion/cave combo. Alfred (Ralph Fiennes) decides that Batty needs a family, so he adopts a boy (Michael Cera) who quickly takes up the mantle of Robin. Meanwhile, the Joker is busy hatching a new plot involving an even wider series of iconic villains outside of the DC universe (but rather tellingly, all owned by Warner Bros.). Somewhere along the way, Batman is going to need to learn the value of family to survive. That’s right, this is one of those Bat-tales where Batman learns the importance of having a Bat-family. For anyone who has read even a handful of Bat-comics (or watched ‘The Animated Series’), the theme will be familiar. However, it’s never quite worked in live action aside from the Adam West series. Well, because it’s a bit silly for a dark and tortured vigilante to learn to love a young boy platonically. That’s tough to pull off in a movie desperately trying to lend credibility to a live action cartoon.
Joel Schumacher tried and failed to tell that popular Bat-myth in the ’90s. The trick that makes the story work this time is that it’s actually funny and completely in love with Bat-lore. Though ostensibly a piss-take on arguably the greatest superhero, ‘The Lego Batman Movie’ is so filled with nods to popular comic book, film and television renditions of the character that nerds will likely spend years sorting out all the references, and they’ll enjoy it too. The film is hilarious as well. ‘Robot Chicken’ director Chris McKay and his team of six writers clearly love this source material, but not as much as they adore absurdist humor and parody. The movie piles jokes on top of jokes inside of references within action scenes. They fly at viewers constantly and the hit rate is high. The CGI-as-Lego-stop-motion aesthetic is as eye-tickling and adorable as ‘The Lego Movie’, with surprisingly ambitious action scenes blasting audiences in the face almost as often as the humor.
It’s a relentless blast of giddy comic book entertainment, both mocking and reverent of the form. In a way, it feels like the contemporary equivalent of the old Adam West ‘Batman’ TV series – pure unapologetic pop art fuelled by boundless visual imagination and layers of irony. The voice cast is perfect. Will Arnett’s ironically tortured act proves just as infectious at feature length as it was in short bursts in ‘The Lego Movie’. Galifianakis’ dramatic commitment to his cartoon Joker works surprisingly well, as does Michael Cera’s hysterically enthusiastic and childlike Robin (which starts as a parody of an annoying character and somehow grows into a lovable ‘tween). The rest of the cast are all in-jokes who play along gamely, with everyone from Channing Tatum and Jenny Slate to Conan O’Brien and Doug Benson getting a few gags to sell (and sell well). Revealing all of the characters who appear would be unfair, since who pops up and who voices them is part of the fun.