Movie Reaction: The Lego Batman Movie

Formula: The Dark Knight * The Lego Movie

The Lego movie franchise is a wonderful thing. They are movies that I assumed could never happen. In a world of intellectual property rights and competing movie studios, there's really no such thing as crossover. It took a decade of bad Spider-Man movies finally get Sony to let up on the rights enough to partner with Disney. And that's under the same studio banner (Marvel). The idea of Batman, Voldemort, Sauron, and Daleks all inhabiting the same story is nothing short of fan fiction. Yet, Lego found a way. However this legal loophole happened that gives Lego the freedom to use Lego forms of licensed characters however they want, I'm so thankful for it. Legos have always represented unfettered imagination and their movies reflect that too.

Lego Batman is an especially weird sequel. The character Urkeled his way into a standalone movie. Or maybe Minioned is the better verb? Regardless, I don't think The Lego Batman Movie was in the original rollout plans for the Lego Movie Universe or LMU (not to be confused with Loyola Marymount University). The movie works much better than I expected. Will Arnett's Batman* was a great scene-stealer in The Lego Movie but that doesn't always translate into being a good lead. He's fleshed out enough in this installment to make it work.

*At this point, just assume the word 'Lego' has been added before any character name.

"More is better" is the right approach for this movie. The anarchy is the appeal. They throw everything they can at the story and eventually it works. If one Batman villain isn't enough, get all of them. If Batman villains aren't enough, use every other major villain you can think of. Then layer it deep with meta-humor and fourth-wall breaking and there's the movie: a chaotic, entertaining mess with just enough story to keep it moving.

The voice cast is impressive. It feels a level below how star studded The Lego Movie's cast was*, but when you've got everyone from Michael Cera to Ralph Fiennes to Garfunkel & Oates to Siri to Billy Dee Williams to Mariah Carey, it's hard to complain. I want to give a special shout out to Doug Benson's Bane. It's a throwaway part, but it made me laugh every time he said anything with that bad Tom Hardy impression.

*Then again, Chris Pratt didn't take over Hollywood until after The Lego Movie came out, so I could be rewriting history with my memory.

I can't tell if the animation was less impressive because it wasn't as good this time or if I'm just used to the style in a way that I wasn't with the 2014 movie. Lego Batman had a larger budget (still only $80 million to $60 in 2014), so it's probably the latter case. It still looks good. Just, no scenes like the water storm one in The Lego Movie that broke my brain.

You'll notice that I've gone all this time without mentioning the plot. That's because there's no need to talk about it. It's generic and familiar. There's five people credited with the screenplay, which supports my theory that this was written in a writers room like a sitcom episode. It is dense with jokes that hit on different levels and that's all that matters.

The Lego Batman Movie may be even more crowd pleasing than the first movie by being just about the humor and animation and dropping the parts of The Lego Movie that bothered some people. All the parts work as well as I could hope for a movie I didn't think needed to happen. Lego Batman may not be the sequel that we need, but it is the sequel we deserve. 

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend