MOVIE REVIEW: Batty fun

More than once, I had to look up the name of the film -- was it The LEGO Batman Movie, or The Batman LEGO Movie? -- which is a pretty sure sign that we're dealing with the very corporate synergies that I usually rail against (see nearly all my writing about Disney over the last five years). In this case, we have a film from Warner Bros. using their DC ownership to create yet another Batman movie, in conjunction with the privately-owned LEGO Group, to produce a 104-minute film that is entirely built from toy product placement.

So, all of that is in place to make me gnash my teeth and start considering synonyms for words like "hateful," "sell-out," and "brainwashing" ... and yet, for all of its obvious corporate ties, the film is still pretty entertaining, and has enough genuinely funny moments to propel you along, like being on a water raft in an amusement park, letting the current take you all the way down to the splash pool.

For one thing, the vocal talent on this production is ridiculous, if even almost a little too spot-on. If you were to sit and imagine the most obvious choices for the characters, these names would likely come up pretty quickly. Batman is voiced by the gravelly toned Will Arnett; Robin, his kid sidekick, is Michael Cera; this version of the Joker, who we can say is a good deal more emotionally needy than the Heath Ledger interpretation, is Zack Galifianakis; Ralph Fiennes is Alfred, Bats' posh butler; Billy Dee Williams is Two-Face, and so forth. Fortunately, there are so many characters -- including pretty much Batman's entire rogue's gallery of villains, including some, like the Condiment King, made up for the production -- you can't get terribly carried away with who is playing whom. Suffice it to say, based on the cast, not too many of the producers' first choices turned them down.

Our story takes us to a familiar place in the Bat Universe. Batman is wildly capable at fighting crime, in fact he thrives on it, but he's far less successful at creating true, familylike camaraderie, preferring, as always, to work alone, despite the imploring entreaties of his loyal butler, Alfred. Enter Richard "Dick" Grayson (when he tells Batman his fellow orphans call him by his shortened name, Bats responds "Kids can be so cruel"), an orphaned kid with wide eyes, a flair for acrobatics, and a serious need for a father figure. Reluctantly, Bats takes him in, eventually growing to appreciate his contributions -- even if his initial plans all play off the idea that Robin is "entirely expendable." Further, when the Joker invokes yet another master plan, releasing all the villains and monsters of the phantom zone to prey on Gotham City (an inspired assemblage that includes Voldemort, Sauron, King Kong, a bunch of gremlins, and Bruce, the shark from Jaws), Batman is forced to accept the help of Alfred and Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), first in her class at Harvard for police, to rid the city of these horrors.

At times, the film plays almost like a LEGO-ized version of one of the Naked Gun flicks, with gags flying around from all directions at once. Some of these hit just right -- my favorite comes immediately after the Joker surprisingly traps all of his usual nefarious buddies in a giant box, leading the Riddler (Conan O'Brien) to say "Riddle me this: What just happened?" -- while some land somewhat short of their target. But they come so fast and relentlessly that the pace eventually breaks you down. They get good mileage out of the endless iterations of previous Bat movies (including the Adam West-starring version from 1966 that involved Bat-go-go-dancing, among other delights), and tweaking other franchises (Batman's password for entering the Bat Cave is a simple "Iron Man sucks") in the process.

Naturally, the film gets a bit heavier handed by the end, when Bats is forced to accept that he can be in a loving family again, and the city is eventually restored from complete disintegration by a group effort by all its citizens, but you'll still be giggling, even as your young ones will be getting set to harass you to buy all the new Batman LEGO kits that will doubtlessly come out of this franchise. Somewhat incredibly, I would still maintain it's a relatively small price to pay for this much silly amusement.

MovieStyle on 02/10/2017