The Lego Batman Movie

I've been a fan of Batman as long as I can remember, even before the 1989 movie. I used to lay awake at night hoping if I had to die it wouldn't happen until AFTER I finally got to see Tim Burton's masterpiece. Then, I figured, I could die and it wouldn't matter. At least I would have seen BATMAN.

Little did I know a billion years later I'd be going to see a cartoon called THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE as an old man. I enjoyed THE LEGO MOVIE, specifically Will Arnett as an egotistical Batman (in full Tim Burton/Michael Keaton mode), so I was looking forward to this one, which promised to be a star-studded sendup and love letter to all things BAT.

The movie gets off to a promising start, with an action-packed musical number featuring Batman battling an army of super villains led by the Joker (Zach Galifianakis). During the battle, Batman lets slip to the Joke that he doesn't consider the Joker his arch nemesis. The rest of the movie's plot concerns a heartbroken Joker's attempts to become Batman's arch nemesis once and for all, and Batman's struggles with intimate relationships after the trauma of his parents' untimely demise.

Unfortunately, even at under 2 hours, there's only really about a half hour of material here, so after the first 30 minute barrage of action and jokes, the movie starts to get a little stale and old and it eventually crumbles into a series of loud and visually confusing set pieces that had me wondering when the end credits were coming.

The movie also had me wondering – why Legos? The original LEGO MOVIE had a reason built into the plot why it was about Legos. LEGO BATMAN, not so much. They could have made virtually the same movie without the Lego angle and everything would have been the same. I realize it's a brand people recognize and a spinoff of another movie and so on and so forth but they could have done at least SOMEthing to write actual Legos into the plot. Right?

Still, it's not that bad if you can put up with it, and definitely has its moments, including some of the best Robin stuff that's ever made it into a mainstream BATMAN production, with Michael Cera ingeniously cast as Robin. There's also Rosario Dawson as Batgirl and Ralph Fiennes as Alfred, and there we have a cast I wouldn't mind seeing in an actual movie, instead of a Lego cartoon. Oh, well.

There's also a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo by the voice of Billy Dee Williams as Two-Face, complete with a Lego-lookalike. I appreciated this nod to the 1989 movie where Williams played Harvey Dent, but was later recast in BATMAN FOREVER with Tommy Lee Jones when the district attorney became Two-Face. I've always wanted to see Williams as Two-Face, and now I have.