If the first Lego movie was about a son messing around with his father's Lego and the two eventually finding common ground, then Lego Batman is what it's like to play Batman with your annoying nagging mother in the form of Bat Girl.
The film opens with a similar energy as The Lego Movie, but it falls apart very quickly and the story becomes mired in the very clichés it's attempting to poke fun at.
Batman isn't good at working with others. It's a theme that has been explored countless times. Yet despite the self-awareness of Lego Batman it still manages to drag on and get annoying as hell. It's the same theme that made Batman & Robin so obnoxious.
Pretty much every time Bat Girl opens her mouth it's like listening to a lecture from your mother about playing well with others and obeying the rules. Here you are just trying to role-play as The Dark Knight and you have to listen to someone talk about the virtues of teamwork. Many if not most animated kids films tend to incorporate some kind of moral or message (which I don't have a problem with), but this is way too in your face and heavy handed it sucks the fun right out of the film.
Another problem is that Lego Batman doesn't give you much reason to care. The Lego Movie succeeds in this by having an average Joe character as well as the sub-plot of the son and his father, and you can clearly distinguish the dramatic and comedic moments. In Lego Batman the tone is incredibly muddled, shifting from manic to dramatic in an instant while it tries to shoehorn in character development.
For Lego Batman they took what was basically a good gag in the Lego Movie and tried to stretch it out for an hour and forty minutes. It doesn't work unless you think Big Bang Theory is funny and that references to nerdy things are jokes in and of themselves. Granted there are some pretty funny moments scattered throughout the film, mainly in the first two thirds. By the last third of the film they've exhausted pretty much all the jokes.
On the technical side it looks just as good as the first film and the realism of the Lego textures is something to admire. However, I did notice a lot more cheating this time around. In The Lego Movie everything was made out of Lego, even smoke and water. Here, smoke is just obvious CGI and so is the water. The characters also stretch and extend in ways that Lego pieces can't, which was done in Lego Movie but concealed much better.
After being blown away by the brilliance of Lego Movie I was very disappointed by Lego Batman which couldn't live up to the very high bar its predecessor set. Lego Movie was full of heart whereas Lego Batman felt like an attempt by DC to damage control a lot of the negative attention they've received for their handling of Justice League. Lego Batman relies entirely on references and fails to create a unique or compelling story, as such I can only give it 5/10.
The film opens with a similar energy as The Lego Movie, but it falls apart very quickly and the story becomes mired in the very clichés it's attempting to poke fun at.
Batman isn't good at working with others. It's a theme that has been explored countless times. Yet despite the self-awareness of Lego Batman it still manages to drag on and get annoying as hell. It's the same theme that made Batman & Robin so obnoxious.
Pretty much every time Bat Girl opens her mouth it's like listening to a lecture from your mother about playing well with others and obeying the rules. Here you are just trying to role-play as The Dark Knight and you have to listen to someone talk about the virtues of teamwork. Many if not most animated kids films tend to incorporate some kind of moral or message (which I don't have a problem with), but this is way too in your face and heavy handed it sucks the fun right out of the film.
Another problem is that Lego Batman doesn't give you much reason to care. The Lego Movie succeeds in this by having an average Joe character as well as the sub-plot of the son and his father, and you can clearly distinguish the dramatic and comedic moments. In Lego Batman the tone is incredibly muddled, shifting from manic to dramatic in an instant while it tries to shoehorn in character development.
For Lego Batman they took what was basically a good gag in the Lego Movie and tried to stretch it out for an hour and forty minutes. It doesn't work unless you think Big Bang Theory is funny and that references to nerdy things are jokes in and of themselves. Granted there are some pretty funny moments scattered throughout the film, mainly in the first two thirds. By the last third of the film they've exhausted pretty much all the jokes.
On the technical side it looks just as good as the first film and the realism of the Lego textures is something to admire. However, I did notice a lot more cheating this time around. In The Lego Movie everything was made out of Lego, even smoke and water. Here, smoke is just obvious CGI and so is the water. The characters also stretch and extend in ways that Lego pieces can't, which was done in Lego Movie but concealed much better.
After being blown away by the brilliance of Lego Movie I was very disappointed by Lego Batman which couldn't live up to the very high bar its predecessor set. Lego Movie was full of heart whereas Lego Batman felt like an attempt by DC to damage control a lot of the negative attention they've received for their handling of Justice League. Lego Batman relies entirely on references and fails to create a unique or compelling story, as such I can only give it 5/10.