Caught up on a child-free showing of The Lego Batman movie (after trying twice this past weekend only to be rebuffed each time by sold out showings). This is a spin-off to the Lego Movie where Lego Batman almost stole the show… and I gotta say this new movie is not nearly as good a movie as The Lego Movie. It’s not a bad movie and its certainly funny but it goes on too long, has too many moments where it could have ended, and gets dragged down by having a conventional theme that we’ve all seen before.
Basically this is a Batman movie that legitimately – if satirically – looks closer at who Batman is than any of the live action movies have. And I give this movie credit for that… but it gets bogged down in answering its own character setup: can Batman learn to work with others, can he accept a family after losing his, etc. Unfortunately, very little of this soul-searching if fun and it drags the movie down every time it has to return to it. Perfectly good storyline for a movie that isn’t a madcap comedy but certainly a theme we’ve seen in plenty of other animated films.
That’s a lot of analysis of theme – is the movie funny? Yeah, for a lot of it, it’s quite funny. There’s just a smash ’em up, crash ’em up mash of Batman references that come so fast and sometimes so obscure, the movie tells you to Google this stuff if you don’t believe it. It also makes visual references to all Batman films (including the old serials from the 1940s), to the cartoons, and more. Batman even mocks his own movie intro and company logos not to mention Suicide Squad (including a funny deep cut about Killer Croc) and Batman v. Superman. Once again we gotta give credit to WB and DC for allowing this much mockery of their own (and other) franchises.
It makes plenty of Non-Batman pop-culture references… sometimes background things like a movie poster called 2 Shades of Grey which is a direct reference to this movie opening against 50 Shades Darker and a line from Lego Movie. Or a joke about Batman watching (and laughing at) romantic comedies and uses a scene of Tom Cruise saying, “You complete me” to Renee Zelwegger… which is itself a reference to The Joker saying the same line to Batman in The Dark Knight. I think it’ll take quite a while to dig up all the self-referential and pop culture humor in this film.
But, still, as a cohesive movie, I was sometimes anxious for it to get on with its story. It bogs itself down too much trying to tell an otherwise admirable Batman/Bruce Wayne story… though maybe the problem with that is that it was done to cater to the kiddies with a Very Important Message about friends and family. A message we’ve seen before in a bunch of kids flicks.
So I’m not saying don’t see it – it’s still a very funny movie and the spots-the-pop-culture-reference is a lot of fun. Just keep in mind that it may not hold up the full way through. But at least it tries to do something interesting.
Score: 81