The Lego Batman movie is a lot of fun. It has almost as much
humour as The Lego Movie, even if the plot itself is not as strong. And that’s
not to say that the plot is bad- it’s more that, of the two, the Lego Movie was
the game changer and now the Lego Batman Movie is just here to give us all a
good laugh.
From that perspective, it does a very good job, being as
silly and as humorous as you would expect from a movie with this title.
Surprisingly, a lot of its best humour comes from various pop culture references,
ranging from other superheroes to completely unrelated franchises (no spoilers
here!). In a similar vein, there are also just enough references to previous
Batman films- enough to be funny, but never enough to go overboard and make it
feel like the film cannot stand on its own.
Overall, the plot itself is also very sweet, but the major
issue is the fact that it becomes just a bit too complicated for its own good,
eventually evolving into a story that requires several third act climaxes. It
ends up feeling like they are going around in endless circles, which is
frustrating, because the story only really needed a bit of smoothing out and it
would have been fine.
The film is entertaining enough that the pacing problems don’t
ruin it, but it does weaken the third act considerably.
The Lego Batman movie is a funny and sweet film that is
enjoyable in spite of pacing issues slowing it down towards the end.
