Lego Batman: The Movie – Super Heroes Unite has some good laughs and the stop-motion animation is well done, however if you’ve played the game, you’ve already seen the vast majority of the movie with only bits newly created to bridge the scenes together to make a coherent story.
LEGO Batman: The Movie – DC Super Heroes Unite (2013)
Genre(s): Animation, Adventure, Comedy
Warner Bros. | NR – 71 min. – $24.98 | May 21, 2013
MOVIE INFO:
Directed by: Jon Burton
Writer(s): Jon Burton & David A. Goodman (story), David A. Goodman (screenplay)
Voice Cast: Clancy Brown, Troy Baker, Christopher Corey Smith, Charlie Schlatter, Travis Willingham
DISC INFO:
Features: Featurette, 3 Bonus Cartoons, LEGO Stop-Motion Short, DVD Copy, UltraViolet
Number of Discs: 2
Audio: English (DTS-HD MA 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 2.0), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Video: 1080p/Widescreen 1.78
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
Disc Size: 17.8 GB
Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Region(s): A, B, C
THE MOVIE – 3.75/5
Synopsis: An award party for Gotham City’s Man of the Year, Bruce Wayne (TROY BAKER), quickly descends into chaos when The Joker (CHRISTOPHER COREY SMITH) crashes onto the scene with a full gallery of rogues at his side, including The Riddler, Catwoman, The Penguin and Two-Face. The Dark Knight swings into action to corral the uninvited guests, but one criminal attendee isn’t quite so obvious – Lex Luthor (CLANCY BROWN), and with him a secret weapon that could change the balance of power in Gotham forever: The Deconstructor! The troublesome team of Lex Luthor and The Joker may be more than a stubborn Batman and Robin can handle alone, but what are Super Friends for?
Quick Hit Review: Culled from the video game cut scenes, LEGO puts together a relatively coherent and thrilling story by putting in new footage to piece together an entertaining little movie. Now, given the 70-minute running time and seeing the scenes from the game online, only 5% of this is new with the rest anybody who has played the game has already seen. Even so, there’s some great scenes spoofing either Batman or Superman (i.e. John Williams’ famous theme every time Supes enters).
The voice acting isn’t bad with Clancy Brown returning to voice Luthor and Christopher Corey Smith makes for a pretty good Joker with a respectable hysterical laughs. But Troy Baker as Wayne/Batman is weak yet hardly a big drawback given the source material and tongue-in-cheek nature of the subject and plot.
SPECIAL FEATURES – 2.25/5
Like the other LEGO releases, this comes in an oversized box holding the Clark Kent/Superman LEGO Mini-figure.
Building Batman (14:55; HD) – This featurette looks at how these movies get made via stop motion and a tour of the studio with some kids. It’s actually a relatively interesting to watch.
From the DC Comics Vault contains three episodes from “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” (x2) and “Teen Titans”. Nothing extraordinary but fun episodes…
LEGO Batman Jumps into Action (0:38; SD) is a lame Stop-Motion short featuring the Caped Crusader.
Winning Shorts from the LEGO DC Universe Super Heroes Video Contest (TRT 14:58; SD) allows you to view the top 5 videos.
Preview – Scooby-Doo: Stage Fright
VIDEO – 4.25/5
Lego Batman: The Movie arrives on Blu-ray presented with a 1.78 widescreen aspect ratio and a respectable 1080p high-definition transfer. As one would expect, the picture quality is pristine showing no artifacting or pixilation. The detail levels look nice and the color array seems well balanced. It’s nothing to boast about but it’s a solid transfer.
AUDIO – 3.25/5
The 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio doesn’t quite fair as well. While the audio most of the time is decent, there are other moments where it sounds too low. Also, when we do get to action scenes, there’s little, if any, oomph behind it. As a whole, the audio seems to be mostly relegated to the center channel while other elements do make some modest use of the front and rear speakers.
OVERALL – 3.25/5
Overall, Lego Batman: The Movie – Super Heroes Unite has some good laughs and the stop-motion animation is well done, however if you’ve played the game, you’ve already seen the vast majority of the movie with only bits newly created to bridge the scenes together to make a coherent story. The Blu-ray has an OK amount of features, the video is adequate and the audio is merely OK. If you can nab this at a cheap price then it might be worth it especially to Batman and/or DC Comics fans.
Published: 05/20/2013