Review: ‘The Lego Batman Movie’ Is A Few Bricks Short Of ‘The Lego Movie’
To be fair, it had a hard act to follow.
The first time I saw The Lego Movie, I was stuck nine hours into a 15-hour flight, and I was feeling a tad sensitive. Actually, sensitive is the wrong word. I was weepy. My sleeping pills hadn’t worked. My red wine hadn’t worked. I was alone, I was frightened, and I was panicky.
That’s when, with a trembling finger and big, cartoony sad eyes, I pawed my way through the Qantas offerings to find The Lego Movie. That damned thing broke my heart clean open. It pushed me over the edge into full-blown tears. When the steward came past to check if I was asleep and saw me sobbing into my complementary horse blanket, she took one look at me, left, and returned with lightning speed bearing a Weiss Bar aloft to calm me down. I cried twice as hard, took it, and wailed, “They’re all so PURE”.
Lego can have that effect on adults. The company seems to have married their incredible brand ID with nostalgia, but has made that nostalgia ongoing with often superb video games based on movie franchises — Harry Potter, Star Wars, Doctor Who, you name it. Then, they make toys based on those franchises, and THOSE sell like crazy too. It’s a big pop-cultural love-in where every property you ever loved gets the Lego treatment.
This is why The Lego Movie felt so brilliant and fresh. It wasn’t really about any of these properties; it was a totally new story, about a fairly generic Lego man and his friends trying to save the world by building things. The movie was ABOUT LEGO. Building with Lego, and the imagination that can require, became the backbone of the film. It revelled in it. And my god, did it have heart.
The Lego Batman Movie — which hits cinemas this week — isn’t bad, but it isn’t as good as its predecessor, nor is it as smart. Batman formed part of a resistance cell of Lego characters in The Lego Movie and his cameo was a funny, biting, self-aware parody of all the stale Batman tropes. But, this doesn’t translate as well to the lead as you might hope. The same saccharine joy that made The Lego Movie so great is cloaked all over Gotham City and it just doesn’t sit quite right.
Getting Will Arnett to return to voice Batman was great, as was casting Michael Cera as Robin (having Gob Bluth and George Michael back in the same space riffing together lends Lego Batman some of its best moments). But this is a hero who routinely has to deal with the darkest elements of society and grapple with the concepts of right and wrong. How do they counteract the grime of all this, as well as the unending trainwreck of the DC cinematic universe? They have Batman beatbox.
White people beatboxing is a very bad thing; we all know that. And it’s not that injecting levity into Gotham wasn’t needed to keep this movie afloat, it’s just that someone, somewhere, got the ratios way off. Maybe it’s because it took five people to write this thing. Or maybe it’s because — and I hope this doesn’t constitute a spoiler — the film is riddled (not a pun) with characters not just from the Batman gallery of rogues, but from other Warner Brothers franchises too.
The best superhero films keep things simple, or they start simple and build their sequels up gradually. Ironically, Lego Batman makes the same mistake every DC movie makes: it rushes ahead way too fast. Having Bats glibly yell his password to enter the Batcave — “Iron Man Sucks” — is cute as hell, but in a world of reboots and sequels, cinematic universes and revivals with your favourite childhood toy it’s also a bit cloying. The best moments in Lego Batman are those when there’s less than 50 characters onscreen at once and when those characters aren’t trying so desperately to hold everyone’s attention at once.
Ralph Fiennes’ Alfred is terrific, Rosario Dawson’s Barbara Gordon (she went to Police Harvard) is inspired casting, and Zach Galifianakis as The Joker is… fine? He’s fine. Mark Hamill has made anyone else playing the character borderline offensive to me, but the point stands: the voice cast is dynamic, and they make the jokes that survived what I’m sure was an exhausting editing and vetting process really pop.
The thing that made The Lego Movie work so well is exactly what makes good Marvel Movies work. Hell, it’s what makes Pixar films work: KEEP IT SIMPLE. Clean, broad strokes. Batman lecturing Robin in the Batmobile is ripe with potential, and genuinely charming and funny to watch. Batman rapping with hundreds of villains looking on? Not so much. The film has quieter moments, and almost all of those work beautifully. It’s when the film tries too hard to counteract the fact that in WB’s last Batman film BATMAN KILLED PEOPLE WITH GRENADES AND A MACHINE GUN that The Lego Batman Movie loses its way.
This is also sort of a no-win situation for a critic, too; dumping on a kids’ film is always going to be met with cries of “relax!” But that doesn’t really fly nowadays. Kids films are smart as hell, and they’re where some of the best stories around are being told. Lego Batman is a brick or three short of greatness.
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The Lego Batman Movie is released March 25.
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Paul Verhoeven is host of Steam Punks on ABC3, and host of the weekly gaming podcast 28 Plays Later. He tweets from @PaulVerhoeven.