LEGO® minifigure Batman (voiced by WILL ARNETT) “The LEGO® Batman Movie,” from Warner Bros. Pictures and Ratpac-Dune Entertainment. A Warner Bros. Pictures release. BATMAN and all related characters and elements TM & (c) DC Comics Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.
The LEGO Movie was original, inventive, witty and stylish. Batman was used as punctuation – injected a bit of pompous self-congratulation while saving a few lives.
The LEGO Batman Movie takes those few moments and puffs them up into a 104-minute excursion into the EGO part of The LEGO Batman. By the time he decides that he can’t do it all alone, the film’s relentless barrage of witless gags, unsubtle digs and brilliantly animated but repetitive sight gags have pretty much put its audience over the age of 5, to sleep (I heard no laughter during the screening I attended).
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is an 8-bit, rock & roll, multi-period, anime´, kung fu teen romance – which is to say that it’s a genuinely unique movie experience. Short form: Pilgrim falls in love with a girl in what he thinks is a dream, meets her at a party and stalks her until they fall in love, then has to deal with her baggage [seven evil exes] as well as his own [the girl who dumped him went on to become a rock & roll goddess].
If there was a comedy that has biblical proportions for the 21st Century, Year One would not make the cut even in the 1st Century. If we really wanted to "Meet Our Ancestors" as the movie’s tagline suggested, I highly doubt that the human race would survive and thrive. The movie follows Zed (Jack Black), a villager who is a lazy hunter who spears his fellow man rather than a warthog for food. He tries to win the heart of his dream lover Maya who is outside of his league in more ways than one.
The story of two Neanderthal-like men, who stumble and bumble away from their village and through a series of famous early Biblical stories, makes up the so-called plot of Year One. On paper I could see how a studio executive greenlit this project especially since Harold Ramis, writer of Caddyshack and Animal House, was at the helm. However if any movie yet to be released in 2009 is worse than Year One, I’ll be shocked.
