Behind the Scenes: The LEGO Batman Movie
Posted on February 9, 2017 at 8:00 am
The LEGO Batman Movie
Posted on February 6, 2017 at 5:26 pm
“The LEGO Batman” movie is not just sure to be one of the funniest movies of the year, with laugh lines that come so fast it is impossible to catch your breath before the next one. It is also the most astute mash-up of love letter and take down of a popular culture icon since the brilliant “Galaxy Quest.”
“The LEGO Movie” was an unexpected blockbuster, sweet and very funny, surprisingly ambitious in scope. This spin-off is more focused, its basic structure very much in the tradition of the DC Comics character as created by Bob Kane and Bob Finger and as interpreted through the Adam West television series of the 1960’s, the Dark Knight comics and movies, and the Tim Burton movies, all of which get quick, understated, very clever nods so deeply enmeshed in the history and culture of Bruce Wayne/Batman and his world as to satisfy the heart of the most devoted fanboy. There’s even a plane from McGuffin Airlines.
The movie opens on a black screen. In case we don’t understand why, LEGO Batman explains that “all important movies begin with a black screen” and edgy music and logos. Just in case that isn’t pretentious enough, there’s also a quote on the screen…from that great philosopher Michael Jackson.
The Joker (Zach Galifianakis) has a great big bomb and is getting ready to blow up Gotham. This is very serious as it turns out Gotham is held up only by, well, pretty much a table. Batman comes in to take the bomb and save the day — also to break the Joker’s heart because he won’t acknowledge that the Joker is the most special and important of all of the villains. Pro tip: when you confiscate the Joker’s big “unnecessarily complicated” bomb, disable it before you stow it in the Batcave museum.
Gotham saved, Batman goes home to a lonely lobster thermidor dinner and a solo screening in his home theater, where he has a collection of mostly-cheesy romantic comedies. When he’s not responding to the Bat Signal and saving the day, he roams around Wayne Manor gazing pensively at old family pictures (note that on that last shot of his parents outside the theater, the nearby street sign says “Crime Alley”). But of course it would not be a Batman movie without some fancy society gala, so he dons his tux and goes to Commissioner Gordon’s retirement party. Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) is taking over and to Batman’s dismay she tells the crowd that she plans to stop relying on Batman for all of Gotham’s crime-fighting needs. (After all, even with all his skill, Gotham is still constantly being attacked by deranged and very colorful bad guys.) She wants to involve more people in law enforcement. Batman is not at all happy about this. Furthermore, he is so distracted he sort of accidentally agrees to adopt an enthusiastic orphan with big anime-style eyes (Michael Cera as Dick Grayson).
Joker has come to a similar conclusion and he decides to team up, too — with the inhabitants of Superman’s Phantom Zone, including just about every literary bad guy anyone 12 and under might know, from Harry Potter’s Voldemort to King Kong and Oz’s Wicked Witch of the West.
The jokes come very fast, usually understated and references to pop culture, which adds to the feeling of being in on something. And the visuals are delightful, perfectly evoking the adorable clunkiness of the LEGO universe. The flames are made of plastic and the guns go “pew pew pew” instead of “bang bang bang.” But the cleverest idea of all was understanding that the very same qualities that make Batman, especially in his Dark Knight persona, so compelling work even better if he acts petulant and childish instead of a brooding and mysterious. The playground-style taunts are funny because they are real and relatable, no matter how old you are.
Parents should know that this movie has cartoon-style action and peril, with no one hurt, some schoolyard language and potty humor.
Family discussion: Why is it hard for Batman to rely on other people? Why does he like to watch romantic comedies? How does he feel when he sees all the other Justice League superheroes at the Fortress of Solitude? Why does the Joker care how Batman feels about him?
If you like this, try: “The LEGO Movie”
New from Audible: Comedy from Will Arnett, Weird Al Yankovic, Rob Delaney, Nick Offerman, and More!
Posted on November 11, 2016 at 7:00 am
Audible has announced a wide array of new exclusive and original comedy shows available free within the Audible Channels experience.
The Comedy Show With Will Arnett is an all-access pass to the hottest thematic comedy shows around the country. Other shows include “Bedtime Stories for Cynics Presented by Nick Offerman,” and audio series and specials featuring notable comedians including Eugene Mirman, Dan Savage, T.J. Miller, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Jim Gaffigan, Lisa Lampanelli, Rob Delaney, George Lopez, and many, many more.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Posted on August 7, 2014 at 5:59 pm
Dear Michael Bay,
Just because you were able to turn one Saturday cartoon series for children into a PG-13 blockbuster, based on nostalgia on the part of its now-teen and 20-something audience and some world class special effects, does not mean that you can do the same with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is less “Transformer” and more “Yogi Bear” or “Scooby-Doo.” In other words, step away from “Shirt Tales” and “The Wuzzles.” Please, just stop. Sincerely, The Movie Mom
Before it wore or, or, more accurately, wore down its welcome, the original “Transformers” was a refreshing surprise that kept the spirit of the original series. But even as a cartoon show, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were meta and self-referential and cutesy. I mean, just look at the concept: they’re turtles. And ninjas. And teenagers. You can blow them up into CGI behemoths, but they still can’t make a movie work, even by bringing back the original star of the first “Transformers” movie, Megan Fox.
Fox plays April O’Neil, a would-be investigative reporter relegated by her condescending colleagues to cutesy stories like exercising on mini-trampolines in Times Square. She would much rather be reporting on a powerful and merciless gang of criminals known as the Foot Clan. No one believes her when she says she saw a super-strong vigilante in the shadows, fighting the Foot Clan, including her editor (a “what is she doing in this movie?” Whoopi Goldberg). It turns out she has a connection to this mysterious crime-fighter. Her father was a scientist who died in a tragic lab accident as he was working on a special strength-giving serum by injecting it into four young turtles. The night the lab burned down, April rescued the turtles and a rat by letting them escape into the sewer.
A handy martial arts manual found in the sewer gives the rat, known as Splinter (voice of “Monk’s” Tony Shaloub) the chance to train the young turtles, and the effects of the injections make them grow up to be large, muscular, and able to stand upright. Each of the four has a different color mask and a Smurf-like individual personality quirk. But they all love pizza.
The action scenes are well-staged, especially a snowy chase scene, though I have no idea where the snow came from as we only see snow outside the city. But the script is lame and the violence is too intense for anyone old enough to be interested. A slumming William Fitchner plays an industrialist who is not as philanthropic as he seems. And the scenes with an even-more slumming Will Arnett (what happened to his career?), whose two functions are to drive April around and be generally skeezy about his interest in her, are just painful. April strives to be taken seriously as a journalist. Fox, sadly, fails to be taken seriously as an actress (which she really is — see “This is 40”).
And the title characters are under-used as well. For a movie about the TMNTs, they just don’t have enough to do beyond loving pizza and kicking bad guys. Whatever charm existed in the original cartoons is trampled by this over-blown bore.
Parents should know that this film includes cartoon-style action, peril, and violence, sad off-screen death of a parent, some brief disturbing images, some crude humor and a brief potty joke.
Family discussion: Why didn’t anyone take April seriously? Which turtle is your favorite and why?
If you like this, try: the TMNT cartoon series and the earlier films
The LEGO Movie
Posted on February 6, 2014 at 6:00 pm
A-| Lowest Recommended Age: | Kindergarten - 3rd Grade |
| MPAA Rating: | Rated PG for action and crude humor |
| Profanity: | Some schoolyard language ("butt") |
| Alcohol/ Drugs: | None |
| Violence/ Scariness: | Cartoon-style peril and violence, no one hurt |
| Diversity Issues: | Diverse characters |
| Date Released to Theaters: | February 7, 2014 |
| Date Released to DVD: | June 18, 2014 |
| Amazon.com ASIN: | B00HEQOC2A |
Everything is awesome in this fast, fresh, funny, and utterly adorable movie set in the vast world of LEGOs.
Last year at Comic-Con the filmmakers said that there are two great things to do with LEGOs — you can follow the instructions and make something awesome. Or, you can ignore the instructions and make something awesome. Here, they pay tribute to both in the storyline and in their own meta-approach to the material, deconstructing classic movie narratives over here, re-constructing them over there, and adding in some delicious humor and sublime guest stars of both the LEGO and human variety. So when a Gandalf-y looking guy with the deep, familiar voice of Morgan Freeman intones a prophecy about a chosen one, we file it away as the underlying frame for the story — for a couple of seconds until he advises the confused crowd that it has to be true because it rhymes. Big-time Lugnuts and Brick-heads will find plenty of in-jokes and wonky charm and those who don’t know their minifigures from their master builders will enjoy the wit, the silliness, and the surprisingly touching conclusion.
The movie winsomely begins with LEGO logos, immediately welcoming us into a playful, tactile world. And then we meet our unassuming hero, the cheerful Emmet (a terrific Chris Pratt), who greets each day with joyful energy and loves everything about his life. At least, that’s what he tells us as he follows the instructions for getting ready for work on a construction site. The song “Everything is Awesome” (from Tegan and Sara) plays brightly everywhere. Instructions are clear and faces are painted in a smile. But Emmett is lonely. Everyone seems to have friends to hang out with but no one invites him to come along. He loves being part of a team but kind of misses having something special and different.
And then, the brave and glamorous Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks), with her fetching streaked ponytail, shows up and he follows her down the LEGO equivalent of a rabbit hole to discover that everything he thought he understood about his world of following instructions and being part of a team is at risk. President Business (Will Ferrell) is about to unleash a terrible weapon, and apparently Emmet is the only one who can stop him. There are worlds beside and under worlds and within other worlds here — you could make an “Inception”-style map that takes you from the wild west and Middle Zealand to Cloud Cuckoo-land. The film makes clever use of the properties of LEGOs, their endless variety of characters and projects and their comforting sameness of structure and inflexibility. It avoids becoming an infomercial by keeping the focus on the story and the goal of creativity. Emmet and Wildfire are joined by Batman (Will Arnett’s dry baritone nails it), Vitruvious (Freeman), a pirate cyborg (Charlie Day), and a rainbow unicorn-kitty (Alison Brie). Their foes include President Business’ two-faced henchman whose head swivels to allow him to be both good and bad cop (a very funny Liam Neeson). It would be criminal to give away any of the movie’s many surprises and the mind-bendingly cool guest appearances, but I will mention that a couple of them arrive from a galaxy far, far away.
There are some unexpectedly heartwarming moments about family and the importance of imagination. The bad guy is not called President Business for the usual reasons. And there’s an unusually astute resolution to the final confrontation. I especially enjoyed some very clever satire about the kind of entertainment we too often settle for. If only they had known about Facebook’s 10th anniversary gift to each of its subscribers of “look back” mini-movies of their own lives — but not even “The LEGO Movie” could have come up with anything that solipsistically deranged. But this movie is itself the best possible antidote to the tendency to settle for lowest-common-denominator formula story-telling. It won’t just inspire you to see better movies; it will inspire you to make your own.
Parents should know that this film has cartoon-style peril and violence with many threatened injuries but no one hurt, a parent-child confrontation, some potty humor, and schoolyard language.
Family discussion: How do you decide whether you are special? Is it more fun to follow directions or make something up? What parts of the LEGO world do you recognize?
If you like this, try: the “Toy Story” movies and “Robots” — and build something with LEGOs!