I wasn’t intending to do this one, but it’s a leadup to another review so here we are, the Lego Batman movie.
Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t enjoy the
movie, far from it, but the reason I don’t review it is the same reason I
haven’t done an in-depth review of a lego short since way back when I did Star
Wars, there’s precious little to say about them. Most of the jokes in them are
self-referential, either to the fact that they’re Lego or to various plot
elements of the story it’s based on. They’re designed to sell Lego merch to
children first and foremost. The Lego Batman is a good kids advertisement,
don’t get me wrong here but its humour is satirical and it’s difficult to
explain why I like it without also spoiling the jokes, plus unlike with the
Lego Movie, there’s no overt real world allegory to it.
Still, it’s hardly surprising that Lego Batman would get a
spinoff. Warner Brothers already owns the rights to the character, there have
been 3 Lego Batman games and various Lego shorts based around Batman, plus
Batman is still DC Comics’ most popular character. The film made a reasonable
$312m on its $80m budget, not quite as much as its predecessor but enough to
call it a success. And it has a pretty stunning 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
with a 9.5/10 average score.
