Review of The Lego Batman Movie (2017) by Cameronius_113 — 11 Feb 2017

The LEGO Batman Movie was released in 2017 and was directed by Chris McKay. It is a spin-off of the 2014 film The Lego Movie and explores the character of Batman introduced in that film, showcasing his sense of humour but also his loneliness.

Evident from the trailers, this movie has fantastic humour and is one of the first films in a while that has got me laughing, but this time not laughing AT the movie (I've done that more times than I care to count recently). What I love about the film is that it knows exactly what it wants to be and also isn't afraid to make fun of Batman's pop culture history, no matter how recent which proves that this film definitely had some clever minds behind it.

Will Arnett's portrayal of Batman is (and I'm not joking) probably the best I have seen since Michael Keaton in Tim Burton's Batman films (I'm excluding Kevin Conroy as he hasn't appeared in big-budget Batman films made for cinema). His constant use of sarcasm was easily the best part of his character and was constantly funny and it also never got old either. The character had already previously appeared in The Lego Movie but this movie really explored him in an entertaining but also involving way too.

The side-characters were plain fantastic to see; Robin always puts a smile on the audience's face, Barbara Gordon's character was well-done and also the route they went with The Joker was interesting albeit amusing too and made him a proper character as I feared from the trailers that he may have turned out to be a bland villain which thankfully he didn't.

As with the original Lego Movie, the animation is great and is very visually appealing; it's made to look like stop-motion animation and it genuinely does feel like it is all of the time even though it is CGI. All of the action sequences were very fun to watch with the wide range of colours and effects too.

An issue one could have with the film is that it does follow a very similar plot to the original Lego Movie but with all of the great characters and humour it honestly didn't bother me at all and I was constantly invested in the film. I also found this plot to be more consistant too, with the original Lego Movie plot feeling a bit all-over-the-place for me (although most of it was tied up at the end) with lots of locations which I kind of felt were a bit unnecessary. However, this film thankfully kept within the boundaries I wanted it to.

While this film does have its comedic and satirical tone, it also did have a heartfelt side which I was expecting because the original Lego Movie did too and it was done very well. It was great to see how well it delivered all of the messages that it wanted to and also explored some themes which could seem complex but in a simple, friendly way. You may think that I loved this portrayal of Batman purely because of the satirical nature of the character but there was much more to the character which was handled surprisingly much more effectively than in plenty of the recent Batman films.

Overall, this was a great film to start 2017 and one that thankfully didn't disappoint. The humour is on-point and constantly hilarious and the character of Batman is possibly one of my favourite portrayals of the character in any media to-date, no joke. I was pleased to see that there was more to the film than just the humour and how well balanced the two aspects were and ultimately made a very entertaining experience. I would definitely recommend this film and is easily one of the best animated films of recent years.

7.9/10.

I can't stop watching the trailers.