Review of The Lego Batman Movie (2017) by Grant S — 30 Sep 2017

After his appearance in The LEGO Movie, Batman now gets his own movie. We see his background, his alter-ego as Bruce Wayne and his lair. We learn how Robin got to be his sidekick. Most importantly we see his seemingly-interminable struggles with his arch-nemesis, The Joker.

I enjoyed the original LEGO Movie: very funny, with snappy dialogue and very original graphics. The best thing about that movie was Batman: dark, intense and very funny and very well played by Will Arnett, who was perfect for the part.

The LEGO Batman movie aims to capitalise on the success of that character. Will Arnett is back, and doesn't really put a foot wrong.

However, the result is not quite up to what I was expecting. The humour of Batman from the original movie seems difficult to expand into a complete movie. In the original movie, Batman was a secondary character and his darkness and intensity was a great contrast to the general cheerfulness and non-seriousness of the other characters. Here he is required to carry the movie and set the tone, and there is no ability to play him off against a more jocular tone.

This said, there are some very funny moments in the movie and the overall result is hardly bad. It just isn't as good as the original LEGO movie, especially tonally, and suffers as a result.