The Lego Batman Movie (2017)

I was pleasantly surprised – I think we all were – by The Lego Movie, which ended up being more heartfelt and entertaining than it had any right to be. Its ostensible spin-off, The Lego Batman Movie, is quite fun, albeit in another direction; rather than critique what in 2014 I called “Hollywood’s remake-happy philosophy,” The Lego Batman Movie lasers its vision on Batman for a loving farce of all that the character can be, has been, and ought to be.

Will Arnett returns to voice The Dark Knight, darker than ever with a new theme song and a smashing set of gadgets, vehicles, and outfits. He’s a Batman that has it all, except for a family, and at the insistence of his trusty butler Alfred (Ralph Fiennes, delightfully droll), Batman takes under his wing the young orphan Dick Grayson (Michael Cera). While Batman learns to work with new police commissioner Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), The Joker (Zach Galifianakis) plots his latest scheme, smarting from Batman’s declaration that Joker is not his greatest enemy.

With The Lego Movie, there was a sense that anything was possible and everything was awesome. For The Lego Batman Movie, everything is still awesome (though that earworm won’t wend its way to your brain in the movie proper), though there’s less a sense that anything can happen and more a focused attempt to bring every aspect of Batman to bear on this adaptation. I’d venture to say every corner of the Bat-mythos is spotlighted here, from the 1940s serials to Batman v Superman, from Crazy Quilt to The Mutant Leader.

For this reason, I’d hazard a guess that I loved this movie more than more filmgoers because it engages with my favorite aspect of my favorite fictional character – this idea that Batman is a conceptually rich figure with a myriad of possibilities built into his very nature. It’s difficult to imagine Captain America in space, or Superman in a mafia noir, or Iron Man in a detective story, or Green Lantern in World War II. Yet Batman works in all these settings, and so I reveled in the idea that The Lego Batman Movie embraces everything that’s ever been done with the character as equally valid (even if, as Alfred says, 1966 was “that weird one”).

There’s something of a farce at play, but it’s one done in earnest and without a trace of malice. Batman is the same grim-n-gritty caricature from The Lego Movie, snarling and petulant, but it’s giddy fun to watch him serenely chow down on lobster thermidor in his Bat-dinghy. Batman’s aversion to teamwork gets turned up to eleven here, providing the framework for a fairly boilerplate “learn to get along” plot that works largely because it’s dressed up in a cape and Bat-ears. In spite of gently spoofing the Bat, there’s something very accurate about the film’s portrayal; Joker’s obsession with Batman rings quite true with the comics, which have leaned toward interpreting his hate as repressed love, while Batman’s “master builder” status (inherited from The Lego Movie) feels of a piece with his apparent canonical ability to create any gadget.

If I have a critique about the film, it’s that its marketing was a little misleading in the sense that the trailers and posters promised a coterie of Bat-villains running the gamut from The Riddler to Egghead. Yes, these characters all do appear, as does the entirety of the Justice League, but I can’t help feeling that they’re somewhat underused, particularly considering the all-star voice cast behind them (Channing Tatum returns as Superman, while Conan O’Brien debuts as Riddler). Only The Joker gets any considerable amount of screen-time – appropriate, naturally – though the reduction of the other villains to near-cameo status feels a bit like someone wafting cake beneath your nose, only to deliver pie. (Fortunately, though, it’s not Joker’s preferred “cyanide pie in the face.”)

The Lego Batman Movie is delirious in its satire and throws everything into the mix for a playful romp through the Bat-mythos. I’ve seen a lot of critics take Lego Batman as an opportunity to turn up their nose at Batman v Superman, as if two competing interpretations of Batman can’t coexist. Rather, I think Lego Batman makes quite the opposite argument – that Batman can wear any suit he likes (with apologies to Henry Ford, even if it’s not black; even if it has rabbit ears, Bat-nipples, or a tutu). Batman goes through cultural evolutions all the time – about every four years, by Alfred’s math – and so Lego Batman ought to be something that cultivates our appreciation for the character’s infinite possibilities, not something that we use to tear down the past. Heck, it’s a Lego movie. Let’s build something.

The Lego Batman Movie is rated PG for “rude humor and some action.” Directed by Chris McKay. Written by Seth Grahame-Smith, Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Jared Stern, and John Wittington. Starring Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, and Ralph Fiennes.

Birdman (2014)

It’s no secret around here that superhero films are really my cup of tea, and I love a good bit of deconstruction as much as anyone.  And with the Oscar race nearing the starting line, I’m ready what the studios have left in the barrel for 2014 to see what they consider to have been the best saved for last.  Birdman is a combination of all three, familiar in some places but oddly unique in others – mostly mystifying but never anything less than riveting.

Michael Keaton stars as Riggan Thomas, a washed-up superhero actor who hung up his Birdman costume after three successful films twenty years ago.  In a bid for new relevance, Riggan is helming a Raymond Carver stage adaptation, a Broadway show with more obstacles before opening night – chief among them the interference of a thespian (Edward Norton) who takes himself far too seriously, the skepticism of his producer (Zach Galafianakis), and the backstage presence of his recently-rehabilitated daughter (Emma Stone).  All the while, Riggan seems to be haunted – or is that possessed? – by the voice of Birdman.

I’ll begin by echoing what nearly everyone has already said – the 87^th Oscar for Best Actor is really Michael Keaton’s to lose.  The apparent self-reflexivity of the role – Keaton left Batman after two films, amid creative differences and concerns of typecasting – had lured me to the theater, but it is by far the least interesting thing about the role, which says something about the staggering amount of depth Keaton brings to the part.  It’s weird that the last time I “saw” him was as Ken in Toy Story 3, a part which had already seemed so perfectly cast.

More interesting than the modest overlap between Riggan and Keaton’s career is the similar approaches to relevance.  Where Riggan wants to be admired once more, his whole arc in the film a bid to be taken seriously, there is no scent of that desperation in Keaton’s work.  Instead, any renewed relevance comes ipso facto from the fine performance.  Keaton, like the best comic actors, is able to walk the line between pathos and punchline; he can turn it on or off as needed but often finds more versatility in the gray areas.  Especially remarkable are the scenes where he and the other actors are rehearsing the play, the rapid-fire conversation toggling between the playscript and their own actor’s notes on the script.  These are brilliantly done, showcasing the number of levels on which Keaton can work, and they raise one of the film’s most significant themes – the blur between truth and performance.

I’ve always been aware of Alejandro González Iñárritu, but I’d never seen one of his movies before Birdman.  As it stands, this interrogation of performativity is absolutely fascinating, inviting comparisons with Black Swan, which similarly dealt with a performer’s questionable grasp on sanity at the key moment of her career.  Unlike Black Swan, though, Iñárritu has so many themes on his plate that the balanced attention he gives to all of them is a superpower in and of itself.  In the film’s two-hour runtime, Iñárritu tackles performance, love, respect, blockbusters, reinvention, social media, critique, and a handful of others.

This deft balance of the film does, however, leave me a bit perplexed in the sense that Birdman is such a full-bodied satire that I don’t fully know where we stand by the end of it.  Iñárritu is obviously not a fan of superhero blockbusters (Riggan complains that all the good actors are wearing capes), nor does he have any patience for the pretensions of the arthouse crowd (Norton’s technique-obsessed Mike Shiner, a spot-on caricature, is only real on stage).  Iñárritu dismisses lawyers, loathes anyone with a cell phone in front of their face (“Can’t you just have a real experience for once in your life?”), and isn’t too fond of art critics, either.  Birdman targets all of these to expose their absurdity, but the ground on which we’re left is a little shaky.

Many critics are falling over themselves to talk about the film’s apparent long-take filming, and while Iñárritu has clearly disciplined his cast to handle these scenes, I’m not too impressed by the overall longness of the takes because I’m certain there’s some digital fakery afoot.  It does, after a while, start to feel like a gimmick – Hitchcock did the same thing in Rope, and it called attention to itself there, too.  Fortunately, however, it’s not a gimmick that takes away from the film, just another neat thing Birdman does.  (Just setting the record straight – it was impressive when Hitchcock faced the challenge on film, but in a digital world, it’s nothing we didn’t see in Children of Men.)

I mentioned the film’s shotgun-style approach to satire, but I do think that ultimately what you make of the film depends entirely on its ending.  The “ambiguous final shot” is so pervasive these days that it’s almost to the point of a cliché, so I would be interested to know what others make of the film.  For me?  Without spoiling anything, I’m a subscriber to the “happy ending” interpretation, for all the science-fictional/superheroic implications that come with that.  Your destination may vary, but your mileage won’t – Birdman is a fabulous thought-provoking crowdpleaser.  I didn’t always know what to make of it, but it managed to feel compelling all the way through.

Birdman is rated R for “language throughout, some sexual content and brief violence.”  The film is littered with F-bombs and other adult language.  A man is seen nude from behind, and in another scene his costume reveals an (exaggerated) outline of his genitals.  There are about three bloody scenes (many involving fake blood for the stage) and a few hamfisted fistfights played for laughs.

The Hangover Part III

When director Todd Phillips unleashed The Hangover, he really let the dogs out in one of the funniest movies of the last five years.  The sequel wasn’t an entire dud, keeping enough of what worked while choosing to recycle most of the plot of the first movie without much vigor.  For Part III, we’re promised an end to the trilogy, an end that’s more Godfather III than Dark Knight Rises.

There’s no wedding, no bachelor party, not even a morning-after hangover – just an intervention for man-child Alan (Zach Galifianakis) after an unfortunate incident involving a giraffe.  En route to rehab, Phil (Bradley Cooper), Stu (Ed Helms), and Alan are abducted by mad mafioso Marshall (John Goodman), who’s got a beef with Leslie Chow (Ken Jeong).  Tasked with finding Chow, the Wolfpack goes on the hunt.

The Hangover Part III is not a terrible movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s far from the resounding success of the first film.  Mercifully, Phillips doesn’t retread over the what-just-happened plot of the first two, and it’s to his credit that he attempts something new.  But in his verve for a creative closer, he left a handful of laughs somewhere along the trail, and Part III just isn’t as funny as its predecessors.  There are a few great moments, mostly due to some stellar line readings, and a moment or two of physical comedy, but overall Part III doesn’t hit the high bar on humor.  It’s not that it’s subtler; it’s just more restrained and perhaps even a bit more contemplative as the franchise winds down. 

The good news is that everyone still turns in consistently good work.  Galifianakis, the undisputed breakout star of the first film, is suitably kooky and not suited for the real world, an awkward bundle of issues that should have been worked out in kindergarten.  Cooper and Helms are still able straight men, though Helms gets more to do with his deft dry heaves, hilarious as ever.  And newcomers Goodman and Melissa McCarthy (as a pawn shop proprietor and amour pour Alan) fit in perfectly, exuberantly over the top with their collaborators; it’s a shame that they’re practically cameos, since their reliably solid work comprises much of the real treats the film has to offer.

Then we get to the bad news.  Aside from missing the consistent roaring-in-the-aisles laughter of the first film, The Hangover Part III makes the unpardonable mistake of giving us way too damn much Leslie Chow.  I don’t know who decided Ken Jeong has ever been funny, but I wasn’t invited to that meeting and indeed would have voted against it.  Chow was unquestionably the worst bit about the first Hangover, but there his presence was minimized; his expanded role in Part II was one of that film’s worst excesses.  Here, it’s worse; it’s everywhere.  It’s uninspired, hammy, amateurishly caricatured, and a little bit offensive – but the worst problem about Mr. Chow is that he’s just not funny.  And in a comedy movie, that’s a deadly sin.

But if Part III is like The Godfather Part III, Chow is unquestionably the Sofia Coppola of the flick.  But like Godfather III, Hangover III is as good a note as any to end the trilogy – not overstaying its welcome, conscious of its own finality, and without the need to suggest further installments.  The Hangover franchise has, I believe, fully run its course, and it’s better to end on a passable note than by overstaying its welcome. 

The Hangover Part III is rated R for “pervasive language including sexual references, some violence and drug content, and brief graphic nudity.”  The dialogue is pretty crude, unapologetically talking about orifices and objects of entry; there are a few firearm casualties and several discussions of drugging people.  As for the nudity, it’s prosthetic and restricted to the mid-credits scene (which maybe you don’t want to miss).

Youth in Revolt (2009)

It's been said that Michael Cera only plays the same character - the gangly, awkward teenager with his unrequited emotions on his sleeve and a mouth full of verbose non sequiturs. In a sense, Youth in Revolt is a response to that theory; here Cera plays a character desperate to reinvent himself as a "dangerous" casanova. This reinvention is fascinating, but much else about Youth in Revolt is otherwise fairly forgettable, marking potential but leaving the audience with little more than in-the-moment laughs.

Cera stars as the unfortunately named Nick Twisp, the standard Cera character, forced to relocate to a trailer park after his mother (Jean Smart) and her lover Jerry (Zach Galifianakis) are involved in selling a dud car to a few sailors. There Nick meets Manic Pixie Dream Girl Sheeni (Portia Doubleday), a girl he recognizes instantly as the love of his life despite the fact that she's already seeing someone. Sheeni's less convinced, encouraging him to "be bad" so that the two can move closer together once Nick is forced to move in with his father (Steve Buscemi). In order to be Sheeni's dream man, Nick crafts a "supplementary persona," Francois Dillinger (also Cera) - a chain-smoking, mustachioed arsonist. Oh yeah, and Fred Willard shows up a few times as Nick's uber-liberal neighbor Mr. Ferguson, who's more often than not eating those kinds of mushrooms.

First, the bad news. Zach Galifianakis isn't even in this movie. Sure, he has screen time, but his trademark stage presence is nowhere to be found; he plays a much more subdued, muted version of himself for the twenty minutes he's in the movie. That's right; it's sort of a spoiler, but the-man-who-would-be-Alan disappears from the film before we've had a chance to get to know his character. It's sort of a letdown, but it's a problem that plagues the rest of the film, too; Buscemi is almost a non-presence in the film, Justin Long peeks his head in for a bit of overplayed stoner humor, and the only thing genuinely funny about Willard's near-cameo is that Fred Willard is on the screen - otherwise, it's a part that could have been played by anyone capable of lying face-down on shag carpet. I haven't even mentioned Ray Liotta, who's also here. Liotta plays another cop, this one a potential paramour for Jean Smart's character, yet my problem here is the same one I had in Observe and Report - namely, that Liotta seems to be slumming. He's obviously talented and does a good job with what he has, but between this and a bit part on Hannah Montana, I'm close to putting Liotta on the "could have been" pile.

The film belongs almost entirely to the two Ceras, who are more than capable of supporting a movie on their own weight (it's just that I hate to see people like Buscemi, Liotta, and Willard reduced to being extras, when they're capable of so much more). Though Cera's definitive role for me will always be Superbad (George Michael on Arrested Development garners a close second), he does a very good job here, mumbling his way through the more awkward parts but doing it all with a sincerity that almost makes you forget this is but a variation on the same character he's been playing his whole career. His turn as Francois Dillinger is the more inspired of the two roles, since Dillinger is cool and confident (inspired, the film implies, by the iconic Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard's Breathless), and it demonstrates there's a little room for growth in Cera's resume. Indeed, Dillinger provides the most laughs in the film, both because it's slightly incongruous for Cera to be speaking lines like "Thanks for breakfast" before overturning his cereal bowl and spitting on the carpet and because Dillinger is so cool about it that he himself seems almost a non sequitur in the movie.

So Dillinger is the star, and his role alone is worth the price of admission, but there are serious problems with the film's own identity. I referred to Sheeni as a "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" with my tongue firmly in cheek and a note of disdain because I'm growing tired of this stock character that's overstayed her welcome. Perhaps, then, that is the best thing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind did for me - put nails in the coffin of the MPDG by exposing her as a fallacy. Early in Youth in Revolt, Nick tells us that the difference between real life and movies is that "In the movies the good guy gets the girl. In real life it's usually the prick." Fair enough; one might expect the movie to go the route of (500) Days of Summer, deconstructing the conventional plot threads while grounding the film in a sense of realism. And it seems to do that for a while; Nick remains obliviously in love with Sheeni while she seems to be willing to dismiss him as a "summer fling," but somewhere near the halfway mark the film becomes the same old story we've seen a million times before - boy overcomes obstacles to be with girl happily ever after. It's frustratingly inconsistent, both because of what the movie has already told us (these endings don't happen) and because of what the movie has already showed us (Sheeni is unwilling to leave her boyfriend Trent for Nick). I'm not averse to changing gears mid-stream, but here it seems purposeless, forced, and implausible. (See Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist for a way to do this shift correctly).

Youth in Revolt, then, is a little like a chocolate chip cookie. When you look at it on the shelf, it looks like exactly what you've been craving. As you're indulging in it, it's delicious. As you're almost done with it, you start to become disappointed. Once it's gone, it doesn't wash so well because you realize it's insubstantial - almost exactly like all the other cookies you've had. But it tasted good doing down, so perhaps that's all that matters.
Not for the kiddies, Youth in Revolt snagged an R rating "for sexual content, language and drug use." Frank sexual dialogue and implications and F-bombs fly freely, and a few scenes revolve around psychotropic mushrooms and marijuana.

The Hangover (2009)

The Hangover isn't a terribly bright comedy, but it's laugh-out-loud in a "my cheeks hurt" kind of way, something I haven't really had since Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.


With their best bud Doug (Justin Bartha, Riley from the National Treasure flicks [also known as the last watchable Nic Cage movies]) getting married, Phil, Stu, and Alan (Bradley Cooper, Ed "Andy Bernard" Helms, and Zach Galifianakis) decide to host the bachelor party to end all celebrations of singlehood. It's the party they never want to forget, but the next morning it becomes clear that this was the party that they can't remember: furniture is smoldering, there's a tiger in the bathtub, a baby wails in a closet, and Doug is missing. What follows is a quest to find their friend - and their memories.


Part of the magic of the film is the almost impossibly complicated shenanigans the hungover experience, and so it'd be ruining the fun if I told you any of what they discover they got into over the course of the night/morning. So, let a few generalizations suffice:

I wasn't prepared to laugh as much as I did at this movie. Perhaps the phenomenon I'm ready to call "Nick and Norah syndrome" is at fault here - it is, of course, easier to laugh at a film when watching it with multiple people. (The same thing happened with Anchorman for me, as well, a film I thought was stupid until I watched it with other people -- and fell in love.) But I was constantly laughing, smiling, or slapping my forehead during the entire movie. Like I said, my cheeks hurt; I clearly enjoyed myself.


Smart comedy? Certainly not - though none of the official Frat Pack members show up in this movie, this one might as well belong in the canon. (In fact, between this and Wedding Crashers, Bradley Cooper might as well be an honorary Frat Packer.) The Hangover is riddled with the kind of humor I've come to expect: people under the influence losing their inhibitions, profuse amounts of randomized vomiting, people ramming their heads into car doors and other objects, as well as pretty prose peppered with profanities. That, a baby in sunglasses, and the funniest photos-over-credits montage I've seen in a long while (replete with Wayne Newton cameo).


The cast is magical in their roles, especially frontmen Cooper, Helms, and Galafianakis. Heather Graham is charming but relatively one-dimensional as the Vegas wife of the gents, and there's a delightful near-cameo from Jeffrey Tambor (George Sr. of Arrested Development fame) as Doug's future father-in-law. Even Mike Tyson does a decent job of eliciting a few chuckles in his self-parodic supporting role, singing and slugging with the best of them - though the star song in this one belongs to Helms, who delivers an impromptu "What Do Tigers Dream Of?" reminiscent of his crooning moments on The Office.


A guy comedy that ought to appeal to chicks as well (the packed house I was in was made up of about half and half, all of whom seemed to be having a good time), The Hangover is more than enough fun for moviegoers looking for loads of laughs.

Deservedly so, The Hangover is rated "R for pervasive language, sexual content including nudity, and some drug material." No dearth of profane and sexualized dialogue, though nudity is fairly fleeting and played for laughs. Like all black-out nights, drugs were involved, and there's some confusion over what drugs exactly were (ab)used.