The LEGO Batman Movie: Review

The LEGO Batman Movie is directed by Chris Mckay and stars Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Zach Galifianakis and Ralph Fiennes, and is the highly anticipated spin-off to 2014's The LEGO Movie. Here we see Bruce Wayne not only trying to clean up the streets of gotham, whilst it's greatest super villains run amok but he must also face trying to raise the young orphan he mistakenly adopted. 

The LEGO Batman Movie takes everything fun and exciting from the Batman universe and turns it into a high energy animated adventure. From the explosive opening scene, we are instantly hit with a quick and quirky joke as Batman pokes fun at the opening credits. As we then see every villain in Gotham terrorise the streets in the classic Batman style we all know and love, from there on the movie is incredibly faced paced, hitting us with joke after joke after joke. Although, it's fair to say after a while it became a little exhausting, whilst still being hilarious, at times the movie really needed a change of pace so we as an audience can sort of take in what has just happened. As the film is so high energy, it feels like it goes too quickly and you didn't get to appreciate every single treasure that the film had to offer.

​The LEGO Movie, undoubtedly, had one of the best messages a kid's movie could ever offer and the entire film chooses to focus on it's rather well structured plot than it's action. The LEGO Batman Movie choses to focus on a different kind of message that in the end still had as much of an emotional impact on audiences as it did in the first movie but in a different way. Aside from focusing a lot more on jokes and action scenes, it also focuses on the development of Batman. As you go out of this movie you may feel that the storyline didn't challenge you as much as The LEGO Movie did however after going away and thinking about it this whole film suddenly has a lot more meaning to it than one would think. Whilst it's plot is so enjoyably simple as it is so rewarding to just see Batman kick and punch his way out of a situation where his greatest enemy's crowd onto the screen. The whole film is dedicated to Batman, and what is done so incredibly well is development of the character, as we see him progress throughout the film. 

One thing the film certainly did well was of course it's wide variety of Batman villains. We are shown enough of each wonderful villain, who are all redesigned in beautifully new Lego moulds. Cera was just the right amount of adorable annoyance as Robin, so thankfully never became over bearing which due to the trailers I feel he may have. Other characters like Galifianakis who does a wondeful take on the joker, Harley Quinn's cutesy psycho, Alfred who offers a lot more of the films more heartfelt moments, also kicks butler ass. And of course the sulky, narcissistic, Batman, offering us nearly all of the film's tropes as the movie skilfully creates even more classic slapstick moments. Not only referring to other Lego characters, the abundance of pop culture references constantly hitting us whilst being seamlessly smart and inventive, that it really is one of the film's best traits, as it not only recreates past Batman movies in Lego, but makes huge references to films like Harry Potter and The Matrix. The usually dark and dismal streets of Gotham are brought to life in some seriously impressive Lego structures and wonderful arrays of technicolour bricks, expanding the world of gotham making the film a fun, if not frenetic blast.

In the end The Caped Crusader is back in what is probably the best Batman movie since 'The Dark Knight', though it doesn’t quite capture the magic of ‘The Lego Movie’, Lego Batman is a character led, family adventure. 

I am going to give The LEGO Batman Movie:

7.8/10