Review: The Lego Batman Movie
I’m going to start off this review by pointing out that I am a big fan of Lego; the blocks, the video games and the movie. I also regularly enjoy animated films meant for children. Therefore it was no surprise to me that I loved The Lego Batman Movie.
My favourite thing about Lego Batman was that it was very funny. I think I spent a good 2/3rd of the movie laughing. Now some of the humor is slapstick since we are dealing with animated characters but there were a lot of Batman related jokes which are good for the Batman lover as well (also me). Something that comedies often suffer from is using all of the best jokes for the movie in the trailer, but I found that even though there were quite a few jokes stuffed into the trailer there were still a lot of laughs that I was surprised by, including my husband and I’s favourite moment.
Still makes me laugh!
The plot of the movie started off good with Joker pulling his usual schemes to take over Gotham and the introduction of the new Commissioner Gordon (his daughter) but then about ¾ of the way through the movie the plot completely unravels and gets into the completely ridiculous category. Even the funny moments here were few and far between. I felt like the writers just slapped the family friendly message of the movie together at the last minute and it really brought down the movie.
Loved the bad guy references though – “British Robots”!
Lego Batman also featured a star studded voice cast a lot of whom I could not pick out while watching. I enjoy Will Arnett’s Batman voice which seems to be a parody of Christian Bale’s most recent Batman portrayal. Additionally I feel the rest of the cast nailed their parts though I was disappointed when I discovered that Ralph Fiennes was a voice actor for Alfred but didn’t also do Voldemort! It was also neat to discover that they used the voice of Siri the iPhone assistant as Batman’s computer in the movie.
Check out this sweet promotional art that shows some of the various characters.
I am a fan of the animation style for the Lego movies but it’s not for everyone. And I would say the same for the entire movie. If you have kids or are a kid at heart it would be a good pick for movie night. Otherwise bust out your favourite Batman movie instead and you will likely have a better time.
I give it 3 snake-clowns out of 5.