WHERE THERE’S A WILL ARNETT ...
... there’s a way to Batman’s funnier, more charming self as a Lego action man
How did movies survive, or even begin, before Lego was invented? Cecil B. de-Mille had to construct sets out of horsehair, plaster and tree bark. Hitchcock experimented with crafting actors out of the same materials.
But the wildly popular Lego Movie of 2014 showed that all you need for both is a generous supply of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene polymer bricks.
OK, OK: The Lego Batman Movie is in fact a computeranimated affair, though like its predecessor it mimics the look and feel of the toy, as well as the imagination unfettered in many of its young users.
Best of all, the film is never brought to a grinding halt by the inability to find that one blue two-by-10 beam needed to complete an incredible racing vehicle. Sorry — flashbacks to one’s own Lego youth are a hazard of this movie.
But there’s little else to worry about. As voiced by Will Arnett, Lego Batman gives the least-bleak portrayal of the Dark Knight since Adam West donned the cape and cowl for television 50 years ago. He tries mightily, growling and pontificating and sulking and posing, but when your movie’s hero is only four centimetres tall, gravitas is the first thing to go.
The clever, original storyline, directed by Chris McKay (Robot Chicken) and scripted by too many writers to list here, imagines a kind of hero/villain bromance between the caped crusader and the Joker, voiced by Zach Galifianakis.
When Batman refuses to acknowledge these feelings, the Joker decides to play hard to get, ironically by playing easy to get. He turns himself in to Gotham’s newest police commissioner, Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), and is incarcerated in Arkham Asylum, which in this movie features an Ark-Ham eatery.
That’s just the start of the many cornball jokes awaiting fans of Batman, Lego and both. Take the pre-launch Batmobile banter, lifted from the ’60s series; or the movie marquee listing “Two shades of bley,” which even this Lego nerd had to Google to figure out. (Don’t worry, it’s not dirty.) And surely Hitchcock would be amused by the fact that the story opens with the hijacking of a jet owned by MacGuffin Airlines.
There are a host of secondary characters in the film, among them a panoply of heroes led by Superman (Channing Tatum), and a bunch of villains including one who should really be voiced by Ralph Fiennes, except that he’s busy as Alfred Pennyworth, butler and foster father to Batman. Some get more screen time than others, but it’s often fun just to watch them arrive.
The story features a subplot about Batman’s fear of intimacy. He spends most nights alone in front of a TV, watching such canine-themed rom-coms as Marley & Me and Must Love Dogs. (Can’t you just imagine a superhero struggling to say that title? “Must ... love ... dogs!”)
Things change when he accidentally adopts an excitable orphan named Robin, played by Michael Cera. There’s even a modicum of real-world relevancy, as when new commissioner Gordon reminds Batman that great power requires operating under the rule of law, guided by ethics and accountability. She deserves that bricker-tape parade thrown in her honour.
But no need to write a thesis about the protagonist’s tiny, clawed hands. The Lego Batman Movie is funny, frantic entertainment that zips along for 104 minutes and won’t leave you humming some dreadful earworm of a song.
No assembly required.