Lego Batman Movie(WB, 2017) – Director:Writers: Seth Grahame-Smith s/p, story), Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Jared Stern, John Whittington (s/p). Finger (creators of Batman). Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster (creators ofVoices: Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, Hector Elizondo, Ralph Fiennes, Zach Galifianakis, & Channing Tatum. Animated, Color, Rated PG, 104 minutes. Lord of the RingsJurassic ParkClash Rating: 3 out ofRemember in 2014, when The LEGO Movie neared its release date and many of us were ready to laugh and ridicule it? Things sure have changed since then. The LEGO Batman Movie has been on my radar since the first teaser dropped early last year, and I’ve been hotly anticipating it all this time. It’s also the first major animated release of the year, and after more than a month of downtime, I’m happy to finally put my reviewer hat back on. My happiness is doubled by the fact that I get to kick off my reviews with such a delightful movie.
And sure enough, LEGO Batman, directed by Chris McKay, gives us a fast-paced delight that expands on its predecessor and delivers even more thrills and laughs. The LEGO Batman Movie stars Batman (of course), voiced by Will Arnett, reprising his role from 2014, and he’s just as boastful and self-parodying as ever. He lives the bachelor’s life, he’s the sole hero of Gotham City, he has a massive mansion all to himself and he’s content with that. However, his life begins to crumble when his butler, Alfred (Ralph Fiennes), demands that he start taking responsibility for his own well-being. The issue is further exacerbated when the new commissioner, Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), begins to change the rules of Gotham. In addition, Batman ends up accidentally adopting an excitable boy named Dick Grayson (Michael Cera), saddling him with the monumental task of balancing his alter-ego with the responsibilities of parenthood. And if that wasn’t enough, the Joker (Zach Galifianakis) has a secret plan for revenge after he finds out he’s not Batman’s number one enemy.
Add all these elements together, and we get a mad adventure that ends up being not only Gotham’s weirdest and most dire hour, but also a wake-up call to Batman that his perfect life may not have been so perfect after all. Now, I do want to start with my criticism. The weakest part of the movie is its pacing: the opening hits the ground running and is mayhem and chaos for about ten minutes. Then it suddenly slows down — or more appropriately, hits the brakes. Now the speed does slow down for a reason: it contrasts the hectic life of Batman on the streets against his lonely home life. It just feels so sharp and jarring that it makes the jokes in this segment feel like they come too slowly. Plus, there are a couple of scenes that I thought were the “belly of the beast” moment, where the hero faces the greatest peril, only to find out we weren’t there yet. It’s not a movie-breaking problem, but it definitely keeps it shy of a perfect score. That negativity out of the way… this is a fun movie.
This is a very fun movie. While there are some problems with pacing, it still works smoothly enough to keep the film moving forward. Oh, and the humor… the film has a very high gag-to-laugh ratio, and you’ll get all kinds of jokes here. In fact one of my favorite jokes is still making me chuckle aloud as I’m writing this. As is appropriate for a project titled The LEGO Batman Movie, the source of a lot of the best gags comes from the Batman lore itself. Remember that ridiculous bat-shark repellent? You can bet that LEGO Batman does, and he also thinks it’s ridiculous. The movie both pays tribute to the beloved Dark Knight trilogy and takes a jab at the ridiculed Batman and Robin. It even takes aim at recent movies such as Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad (it’s so nice to see a studio willing to make fun of itself). In short, it celebrates everything cool about Batman and laughs at everything ridiculous about Batman. A lot of the humor comes from the supporting characters as well.
Dick Grayson is the starry-eyed orphan who’s just happy to be along for the ride, eager to make his new dad proud. Alfred is Batman’s surrogate father, tired of his nonsense and trying to read up on how to deal with unruly children. Barbara Gordon is a no-nonsense commissioner who recognizes the good work her dad accomplished with Batman, but still wants to return to law and order without the aid of vigilantes. The Joker… he just wants to be recognized as Batman’s number one bad guy, in a laugh-inducing reverse bromance: “You never ONCE said ‘Joker, I hate you!’” The way they bounce off each other creates not only great laughs, though, it also creates real heart. Just like The LEGO Movie, roaring good comedy is combined with effective pathos to create a story that’s not only fun, but heart-warming, too. Warner Animation Group has a lot more LEGO movies planned. In fact, we got a trailer before the movie for The LEGO Ninjago Movie. I do feel concerned that they could get burned out from making so many LEGO movies, but so far, they don’t show any signs of losing steam.
Everything is alright in LEGO Batman’s neck of the woods at least. So, go get yourself and the family together to see The LEGO Batman Movie, and make your day a little more awesome. David Gouldthorpe is a junior in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He can be reached at djg284@cornell.eduCostumed avengers, a billionaire with a kinky side, and a brutally efficient hit man proved to be just the tonic for an ailing domestic . “” bested “” at the multiplexes over the weekend, earning a robust $55.6 million to capture first place. “Fifty Shades Darker,” the sequel to 2015’s “Fifty Shades of Grey,” couldn’t quite match its predecessor’s $85.2 million launch. It had to settle for a still sizable $46.8 million debut and second place on the box office chart. Not to be outdone, Lionsgate’s “John Wick: Chapter 2,” a followup to 2014’s “John Wick,” enjoyed a smashing $30 million. That’s more than double what the first film racked up during its debut.
The headlines will inevitably be about “Fifty Shades Darker” and “The Lego Batman Movie,” but the “John Wick” installment’s numbers are more impressive. It grew its audience substantially, adding more female viewers to the mix. Like “Pitch Perfect” and “Austin Powers,” both of which saw a major increase in ticket sales between their first and second installment, “John Wick” has now made a case for itself as a certifiable franchise, one that was nurtured by cable viewings and rentals. “The first ‘John Wick’ came out of nowhere theatrically and we know from the home entertainment team it way over indexed the norm,” said David Spitz, Lionsgate’s distribution chief. “Consumers loved everything about the world of John Wick.” The three new releases succeeded by appealing to different demographics and age groups — kids and teenagers went to the new Lego movie, women were titilated by Christian Grey’s red room, and men looked on as Keanu Reeve’s assassin made quick work of his foes.
Heading into the weekend, stateside ticket sales were lagging behind last year’s numbers, down nearly 3% from 2016. Studio executives and exhibition industry insiders hope that this weekend will help reinvigorate interest in moviegoing, a comeback that will be aided by the upcoming release of “Logan,” a new Wolverine movie, and a live-action version of “Beauty and the Beast.” Warner Bros. backed “The Lego Batman Movie” and sees the animated films built around the line of Danish toy bricks as being key to its corporate future. The studio is leaning heavily on a slate of animated Lego films, DC Comics adventures, and “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” a Harry Potter spinoff, to help it compete with Disney. That studio has popularized the concept of branded movies, with its arsenal of Star Wars, Marvel, and Pixar films. “The Lego Batman Movie” cost $80 million to make, which is downright economical at a time when many animated films carry budgets that are more than $200 million.
It pits Batman against the Joker in a battle for Gotham City, and boasts a voice cast that includes Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, and Ralph Fiennes. The series kicked off with 2014’s “The Lego Movie,” which made $469.2 million globally. Next September brings another spin-off, “The Lego Ninjago Movie,” a martial arts adventure with the voice of Jackie Chan, and 2019 will see the release of “The Lego Movie 2.” “Brick by brick, ‘The Lego Movie’ launched related stories,” said Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution. “This was just a fun and cool story.” “The Lego Batman Movie” now as the biggest opening of any 2017 release, but it did fall short of projections. Some analysts had predicted the family film would make more than $60 million. “Fifty Shades Darker” is a Universal release. The studio didn’t give a budget for the film (as is its wont these days), but knowledgeable estimates put its cost in the range of $55 million.
The sequel may have lost some of the audience who bought a ticket to the first film to see just how much riding crop would make its way to screens, but there are other reasons it couldn’t equal the reception of “Fifty Shades of Grey.” That movie benefited from being released over the President’s Day holiday, a period that also coincided with Valentine’s Day, making the saucy tale the date night movie dujour. Nick Carpou, Universal’s domestic distribution chief, said that he expects that the film will show more endurance than its predecessor. Valentine’s Day takes place on Tuesday, and audiences are rating the sequel better than the original, giving it a B+ CinemaScore, as opposed to the C+ that “Fifty Shades of Grey” received. Critics, for their part, hated it, but they didn’t care for the first movie, nor the book on which it is based. “The interest in it will spread out more,” predicted Carpou. “With next weekend being a holiday, it gives us a chance to have repeat business.”
Universal’s “Split” surrendered the first place it had occupied for three consecutive weekends amidst the barrage of newcomers. The hit thriller took in $9.3 million to capture fourth place on the chart, while pushing its domestic haul to $112.3 million. Fox’s “Hidden Figures” rounded out the top five, earning $8 million. The Oscar-nominated drama about African-American NASA employees fighting racial prejudice in the early days of the space program has made $131.4 million stateside. In milestone news, Universal and Illumination’s “Sing” topped $500 million globally. The animated film centers on a talent competition for animals. On the indie front, Fox Searchlight’s “A United Kingdom” opened in four theaters, grossing $70,000 for a per-screen average of $17,500. The drama chronicles a love affair between the King Seretse Khama of Botswana (David Oyelowo) and Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), a white woman from London, and the controversy it sparked.
The Weinstein Company’s “Lion” continued to chug along in its twelfth weekend, seeing its numbers rise even as it lost 68 screens. The drama about a man who uses Google Earth to find his long-lost family in India grossed $4.1 million to push its domestic returns above $30 million. David Glasser, the company’s COO, argued that the story, which touches on immigration, has struck a nerve in a political climate dominated by talk of travel bans from certain countries. India is not one of the country’s targeted by the Trump administration, but “Lion” star Sunny Pawar, a native of the country, did have trouble getting permission to enter the U.S. for the film’s premiere. “This is a zeitgeist movie,” he said. “As people discover it, you wouldn’t believe the emails that are pouring in. Every day we wake up to notes from politicians, tennis players, even a woman I know from Middle America, all saying this couldn’t be more timely.” Overall ticket sales did slide despite the influx of franchise fare.