THE LEGO BATMAN Movie, A Review

I've never considered dropping money to go see a Lego movie in the theaters, but recently The Lego Batman Movie came on one of my pay movie channels, so I watched it on a lark. I meant to have it on in the background but the funny thing is, once the story started, I stopped everything I was doing to watch it. I literally got nothing done.

Storyline

There are big changes brewing in Gotham City, and if he wants to save the city from The Joker's hostile takeover, Batman may have to drop the lone vigilante thing, try to work with others and maybe, just maybe, learn to lighten up.

Lego Movies and other fun things.

Will Arnett voices Batman; Michael Cera - Robin; Rosario Dawson - Batgirl; Ralph Fiennes - Alfred; Zach Galifianakis - Joker; and a whole bunch more. It was directed by Chris McKay (Robot Chicken series eps, Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III and the upcoming Nightwing project).

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The character of Batman starts out fairly ego-centric to the point of funny to watch, and as different events take place in the film, they are all quite compelling to watch. He's just full enough of himself to be funny, while he's totally focused on working alone. He even makes a point of telling The Joker they aren't a thing, meaning that he denied they have an ongoing conflict, and that he "fights around," meaning The Joker isn't his only arch-nemesis.


After he saves the city from The Joker yet again, the crowds cheer him on and he's eating it up. But when he gets home to his massive bat cave and mansion, all alone, you can see it sets in and he realizes he's alone. But his ego is too much to let him admit it or change it.

And it just goes from there as The Joker figures out a trick to make a jail break, of Superman's Phantom Zone. It gets ugly from there, and Batman is forced to use help.

From there, well, it's all kinds of fun entertainment.

And throughout the movie, no franchise is safe.

Batman's password to getting into the batcave is 'Iron Man sucks.' Some of the evil that came out of the Phantom Zone or other characters include Medusa; the Creature from the Black Lagoon; Dracula; King Kong; the Daleks from Doctor Who; the Wicked Witch of the West and her flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz; the Kraken from Clash of the Titans; Agent Smith and his clones from The Matrix; the great white shark from Jaws; Voldemort from Harry Potter; the Eye of Sauron from The Lord of the Rings; the Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptors from Jurassic Park; and the Gremlins. And also the way the Gremlins attack a plane references The Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". Nothing was sacred to Lego but they did their mockery well and it was wonderful.

And Batman's self-selected theme songs are hilarious.

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