Three years ago, a small movie miracle occurred. A branding exercise egregious even by the standards of such things somehow turned out to be one of the liveliest, funniest, most original filmgoing experiences of the year. This was The Lego Movie, a for-the-whole-family flick set in a world of interlocking Danish blocks that managed to be a successful genre pastiche, a political-religious allegory of uncertain (and therefore interesting) valence, and a joke-a-minute comedy.
One of the funniest notes in that movie was the way it used its superhero characters, and particularly Lego Batman, who was voiced by Will Arnett as a growling, preening narcissist — not the hero of the story but the real hero’s romantic rival and insufferable foil. Which is why we now have a sequel, of sorts, to that lightning-in-a-bottle original: The Lego Batman Movie, with Arnett’s caped crusader as its antihero.
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