The Lego Batman Movie Blu-ray Review
I’ve made a huge mistake.
Five words I hope Zack Snyder said after watching The Lego Batman Movie and realising this comic book parody is infinitely superior to any Bruce Wayne shaped film he will ever come up with.
And like all great movies, we start with a black screen while intensely brooding music plays over the opening credits.
I know this is true because Batman says so, helpfully narrating the intro of his own movie so that everyone gets just how badass he is before plagiarising a Michael Jackson song.
Hooo.
Having set the tone, The Lego Batman Movie proceeds to crank the meta laughs up to 11 as the mythology around the caped crusader’s past and present is hilariously skewered before Bruce Wayne faces off against his own worst enemy.
Himself… as well as Joker and a bunch of other super villains from the dc shaped universe and beyond.
Will Batman conquer his very personal demons and save Gotham city with his his new friends?
What do you think.
The Lego Batman Movie is a laugh-riot of a film that sticks several fingers up at this most bloated and po-faced of genres.
Comic books and the superheroes that inhabit them are ridiculous literary inventions, only surpassed by the increasingly ridiculous fanboys and girls they produce who are so devoted to their quasi religion that they insist the Batman v Superman car-crash of a movie is actually a good film.
It’s not.
Yet it is this very desire for make-believe characters who dress up as, say, bats to be taken so earnestly that makes Zack Snyder’s leaden footed take on Batman so god damn awful.
Well, that and casting Ben Affleck as Bruce Wayne.
Still, this cult of the superhero is exactly what makes The Lego Batman Movie so much fun.
Will Arnett, the man who would be GOB, is the perfect choice to play the vain, narcissistic and utterly deluded caped crusader who’s so far up his own ‘arris that he’s forgotten what the sun looks like.
Joining Arnett to play another character whose development has most certainly been arrested is Michael Cera as Robin, aka Bruce Wayne’s new son.
And it’s this reunited Bluth family double act that produce the most laughs in The Lego Batman Movie.
Arnett’s uber macho Batman and his nine pack – yes, it’s a thing – reluctantly take the stupidly naive and impossibly goggle eyed Robin under his bat-wing to teach him a thing or two about life.
Mostly, what it’s like to be 110% expendable.
Yet in between the hilariously over the top comedy sequences creators Director Chris McKay and co have come up with, The Lego Batman Movie also strikes at the bleeding heart of who Bruce Wayne is and how his tragic past has turned him into this monster.
There are a thousand reasons for Snyder to be embarrassed about his take on dc’s Batman and Superman, but none more damning than a parody of this film franchise managing more emotional depth and range than his overblown, big-budget cinematic disasters ever could.
So tell me Zack – why so serious?
Jonathan Campbell