The Lego Batman Movie (2017)
Directed by Chris McKay
A cooler-than-ever Batman must face the usual villains as the Joker plots a takeover of Gotham City. But when Bruce Wayne accidentally adopts a teenage orphan who wishes to become his sidekick, he’s forced to give up his lone-vigilante ways and learn to work with others.
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20 films that influenced The Lego Batman Movie
What critics say influenced The Lego Batman Movie
The film is, like The LEGO Movie before it, a feature-length toy commercial — and, like The LEGO Movie before it, The LEGO Batman Movie is far more entertaining than a giant piece of crass commercialism has any right to be.
Following on the heels of the smash success "The LEGO Movie" (2014).
Featuring a densely packed dramatis personae made up exclusively of fast-talking animated mini-figures, it has a deliriously giddy rate of gags a minute that hasn’t been seen in a big-screen comedy since its 2014 predecessor, The Lego Movie.
In 2014’s The LEGO Movie , Batman returned in comical, not comic-book form, as voiced by Arrested Development ’s Will Arnett.
The film continues the unique brand of absurd humor, the mentality of a kid having playtime with his or her favorite toys, and pristinely faux-rudimentary design and animation�a combination that made The LEGO Movie such a jolt of pure, imaginative joy.
En el 2014, Warner Bros., se apuntó una sorpresiva victoria en la taquilla con el filme animado The LEGO Movie.
Moreover, The LEGO Batman Movie references the 1985 classic Gymkata and makes the Joker cry.
During a time-out from the tumult of “The Lego Batman Movie,” Bruce Wayne sits at home alone in Wayne Manor on Wayne Island, watching “Jerry Maguire” on TV.
Batman goes back to the Batcave (huge, empty) and up to Wayne Manor (huger, emptier), where he microwaves the Lobster Thermidor that Alfred (Ralph Fiennes) left out for him and watches Jerry Maguire.
He then retreats to his private home theater and watches Jerry Maguire by himself.
Though Chris McKay’s The Lego Batman Movie pulls from a host of DC and Warner Bros. properties for its characters, its clearest source of reference comes from Marvel, specifically the wisecracking self-reflexivity of Tim Miller’s Deadpool .
LEGO Batman sees Will Arnett reprise his adorably moody take on the Caped Crusader from The LEGO Movie in a movie that owes more to Deadpool than to any other Batman movie in existence.
The relentless pace and irreverently self-aware tone are clear from the very start, as Batman — voiced to gravelly perfection by Will Arnett — offers a running commentary on the various studio logos that precede his latest adventure (imagine “Deadpool,” but funny).
It's intriguing, in a way, to see The LEGO Batman Movie hit the scene exactly a full year after Deadpool 's trumpeted arrival.
There’s even “Deadpool”-style fourth wall shattering when Arnett opens the film by commenting on the opening titles and production logos and says as the film opens, “Black.
It's an attention grabber even before the opening WB logo, with a very funny and inventive voiceover that almost tops the beginning graphics of "Deadpool".
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The LEGO Batman Movie references just about every previous live-action version of Batman (perhaps leaving out one of the two black-and-white serials), but the film it’s most like in plot is actually the most reviled, Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin .
For diehard Batman fans, the biggest stumbling block of all might be the picture’s place as the silliest Bat film since Joel Schumacher’s reviled “Batman & Robin.”
But the writers – none of whom worked on the leaner, meaner “LEGO Movie” – never fail to deliver an occasional belly laugh, like when Batman stumbles into a Justice League party uninvited; or when he is lost and under fire in a hall of mirrors – just like Orson Welles in “The Lady from Shanghai.”
The Caped Crusader mops the floor with them despite being preposterously outnumbered, a gag that killed in Hot Shots! back in 1991.
As an aside, while watching The LEGO Batman Movie , I couldn’t help but think that a straightforward Superman movie, in the style of 1978’s Superman , would probably play really well right now.
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There isn't a weak link among the voice talent, but Will Arnett's (2016's " Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows ") committed, gravel-toned performance is a comedic revelation, proving even the most broad of roles can be three-dimensional.The revelation that Batman and Robin share a love of the magical 2001 John Cusack-Kate Beckinsale romantic comedy " Serendipity " is single-handedly all the evidence one needs to realize "The LEGO Batman Movie" is worthy of one's rapturous admiration.
On one level, this seems a generally healthy counterpoint to the amoral near-psychopathy evinced in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
It’s only been four years since the last time we saw Batman in The Dark Knight Rises – two years if you want to be pedantic and say The Lego Movie with The Lego Batman Movie spin-off on the way in 2017 – and lord knows Hollywood’s franchise factory knows not of the old adage that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
I guess they’ll have to wait for The LEGO Batman Movie.
For many, the most welcome part of any "Batman v Superman" screening will be the trailer before the film that promises "The Lego Batman Movie" in 2017.
It isn’t the grim posturing seen in Christopher Nolan ’s Dark Knight trilogy and in Zack Snyder ’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, or the gaudiness of the Joel Schumacher films, or the violent, kinky cheese factor of the Tim Burton films—it isn’t the campy 1960s vibe of the Adam West TV series, either—no, it’s loneliness that makes Batman Batman, and The Lego Batman Movie dives into his self-imposed isolation with equal parts sympathy and glee.
After the morose beat-down that was the ludicrously self-important “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” it’s a much needed breath of fresh air.