Spinning off from the surprise 2014 hit,
The LEGO Movie, The LEGO
Batman Movie gives further exploration into one of its small bit
characters, Batman (again voiced here by Will Arnett,
TNMT: Out of the Shadows), and gives us
the full treatment in satirization on the Batman mythos as it has
appeared in movies and TV shows over the last several decades.
Similar to the relatively clean-slate and much more filthy
Deadpool, The LEGO Batman Movie is a meta comedy full of
in-jokes, broader humor, and complete mockery of its own existence.
However, this one is of a property that is much more well-known, which
means the spoofing is more pointed, so the more invested you are in
Batman as a film character, the more mileage you'll get from the many
allusions thrown at you from the five-man team of comedic
screenwriters.
The Joker (Galifianakis, Birdman)
here is a bit more of a softie -- still a madman, but one
that knows the bond of hatred between himself and the Batman needs to
be reciprocal so that he can be the yin to his yang. "You
complete me," is a theme, pointed out early when Batman decides to
watch Jerry Maguire, though the irony that he chooses to push
everyone away and watch the film alone doesn't seem to connect in his
mind, despite Joker's continuous implorations. To cement himself
as #1 on Batman's hate list, Joker and a host of other baddies of
assorted popularity (Condiment Man, an actual villain from "Batman:
The Animated Series", being the silliest among them) are out to
destroy Gotham City. Batman catches Joker in the act, but still
sees him as just another perp to thwart, hatching bigger and bolder
ideas to come from the clown madman in trying to assure arch-nemesis
status, starting with springing the worst of them from the dreaded
Phantom Zone.
Bolder crime will also be a challenge to Gotham's new police
commissioner, Barbara Gordon (Dawson, Sin
City: A Dame to Kill For), whose main mission is to join forces
with a Batman who prefers to do all his work solo. Despite his
every effort to keep everyone at arm's length, Batman must deal with
fatherhood when he accidentally ends up adopting a young teen named
Dick Grayson (Cera, Sausage Party), who he ends up having to keep an eye on as his partner
in crime fighting vigilantism.
The LEGO Batman Movie is directed by Chris McKay, best known
for his work on "Robot Chicken", and indeed, the film plays out like a
property you might find on Adult Swim. Although, in that vein,
the downside to The LEGO Batman Movie is that it's a bit long
for a sketch comedy premise, which comes at you so fast and filled
with so many references to other works (the villains go beyond
Batman's rogues gallery to include other IP baddies licensed by Warner
Bros.), it's not the easiest thing to
stay focused on for nearly two hours with the kind of attention to
detail necessary to get it all. Expect to get more mileage on
it when it goes to home video, where smaller chunks, and repeat
viewings, may yield greater rewards.
Unlike most of the other Batman properties, there is no effort here to
give much of a backstory or origin to Bruce Wayne, as we find him
already in full-blown Batman mode, only occasionally calling back to
his tragic past as he looks at a selfie he took as a kid that captures
his parents, still alive, in the frame.
The meta-textual aspects in the humor means that those with less
knowledge of Batman as he has been portrayed in all forms of media
will find this a great deal less amusing than those who do, and kids
in particular who are probably too young to watch the hard PG-13 films
that have come out in the Nolan and Burton/Schumacher era may only
like the film for its color and energy more so than in getting all of
the references.
If you get it, you get it, and if not, it's not
a very inclusive film, which means that it is about as wide in its
appeal as Batman is. Given that, there are plenty of Batman and
LEGO lovers around that should make this a profitable undertaking for
Warner Bros.
Qwipster's rating:
©2017 Vince Leo
