Arnett’s growl never ceases to amuse, even when he’s mouthing Deadpool-like meta-snipes on the soundtrack about, say, how very important movies always begin with a black background. Part of the film’s fun is its genial ridicule of the Batman mythology through the ages, including the idea that Batman launches his supposedly covert missions from the BatCave right underneath Wayne Manor. Even though he lives on his own island, Wayne Island, in his own manor, Wayne Manor, Wayne must learn that no man, or Batman, is an island. (Four writers are credited with the script.)Īlong the way, the movie depicts Batman as a psychotic loner posing as a fulsome hero, and Bruce Wayne, his alter ego, as a childish narcissist disguised as a glad-handing extrovert and philanthropist. McKay’s visual inventiveness keeps pace with the madcap storyline, which involves the Joker (Zach Galifianakis) trying to convince Batman (Will Arnett) that he really is the Caped Crusader’s arch-villain, not merely another one of Gotham City’s “rogues.” These include not just predictables like Bane (Doug Benson) and Harley Quinn (Jenny Slate) but that squirty felon The Condiment King, who threatens to smother his enemies with ketchup and mustard.

This time, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the Lego Movie’s writing-directing team, hand the directing reins over to Chris McKay, who is credited as an editor and animation co-director and supervisor on the original smash. The hundreds of millions of fans who saw The Lego Movie (2014) know roughly what to expect: wisecracks, physical gags, and pop-culture parodies shot from a circus super-cannon while the filmmakers concoct wild farcical fantasias out of little Lego bricks. It was as if the movie collapsed under the burden of its own weightlessness: the unbearable lightness of plastic being. Either that, or the laugh-activation center of my brain fizzed out. As for me, after 45 minutes my funny bone became insensate. If you feel like being tickled to death with a high-tech version of a feather duster (and there are worse ways to go these days), The Lego Batman Movie is the film for you.

Lego Batman by Michael Littlefield