The Lego Batman Movie - a semi-critical review (with some spoilers) from someone who loves Lego

The term AFOL (Adult Fan of Lego) is becoming more prominent, and certainly there seem to be more of us around now. Gone are the days when I would wonder round the Lego Shop in town looking sheepishly at all the lovely Lego sets and hoping no one thought I was a weirdo for not having kids in tow. Lego is now a semi-respectable hobby for grown ups too.

A lot of this is down to The Lego Movie that came out a couple of years ago and catapulted Lego back into the wider public eye. I thought The Lego Movie was a great film, and it would probably make it into my top ten animated films that even people who don't like cartoons would like. But it did that off a funny script, an interesting storyline, and the right number of in-jokes - not too many to make non-Lego fans feel like outsiders, but enough to make me smile to myself. Benny's broken helmet strap, the blink and you'll miss it references to Fabuland, that sort of thing.

Batman was one of the surprise supporting characters from The Lego Movie. He was a funny version of the well-known comic book and movie character. His comment about only building using black or very dark grey and his love of his self-penned thrash metal squeezed the pips of humour out of the Batman mythos, but all in the service of The Lego Movie's story.

As a result, I was looking forward to The Lego Batman Movie. But this is a case of where a supporting character can't really carry a whole movie. Cathy has told me of a conversation she had with our friend Tom about this, where they talked about the lower quality of the film Minions in comparison to Despicable Me where they first appeared. The Minions are funny little sideshow characters in Despicable Me. They struggled when carrying a whole film. And in this case Batman suffers the same fate.

The film is funny. There are moments that really amused me. The way they trawled the DC Comics archive for all the stupidest villains for a villain ensemble was funny. Calendar Man, anyone? Kite Man? The Eraser, who looks like a pencil? These are all real and really hilarious. There was a flashback sequence with tableaux from almost all the Batman films in franchise history, which was very cool. Alfred dons an Adam West era outfit and says he misses the sixties. At one point Batman warns Robin they are going to hit the bad guys so hard that words will appear in the air, and sure enough TV Batman style 'KA-POW' explodes into life when he punches a baddie. There's a can of shark repellent. All good gags. All made me laugh.

But there was still a hollowness to it. At the end of the day this was just a mickey-take of Batman - something that has been done before many, many times. We know the story of Batman. Bruce Wayne. Dick Grayson. Barbara Gordon. These are all people we know. When Batman appeared in The Lego Movie, he was a new kind of Batman, He was Lego Batman. And we didn't know him. He was WildStyle's unreliable boyfriend and a bit of a douche. But he was a new character to learn about and relate to.

Batman in The Lego Batman Movie isn't new. He isn't even the Batman we knew from The Lego Movie. He's an amalgam of all the Batmen we have known before. Gotham City isn't new. It's just Gotham City made out of computer generated Lego. The Joker isn't new. We've seen him before and he was more interesting when he was played by Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger or Jared Leto.

There is a break with tradition in that the Joker enlists some other villains trapped in the "Phantom Zone"; all of them villains with a Warner Bros licence. It is amusing watching Sauron as the lidless eye rampaging through Gotham, or the great white shark from Amity Beach recruited to the cause of evil.(But is 'Jaws' evil? That's a conundrum worth discussing. It's just a shark doing what sharks are reputed to do.) But we have seen unlikely team-ups before, in The Lego Movie, for example, with cameos from Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian, and Gandalf and Dumbledore sitting next to each other.

Overall, what made The Lego Movie work was it was about Lego, but also about a whole lot more. The Lego Batman Movie isn't really about Lego. It's just using Lego as a medium to poke affectionate fun at a franchise that has been pastiched to death in recent years, and whose own 'serious' films are bordering on self-parody now. No amount of clever in-jokes, smartly done animation or witty lines delivered in perfect comic timing by Will Arnett could raise this film to the level of The Lego Movie.

It certainly doesn't suck, but The Lego Batman Movie needed more Lego and less Batman.

The compelling mystery of ruins, and the things that lurk in them

If you've read The Lord of the Rings, what's your favourite part? My favourite of the three books is The Fellowship of the Ring. And my favourite part of The Fellowship of the Ring is when Gimli persuades the fellowship to enter the abandoned Dwarf realm of Moria. I have loved it ever since I was a child and my Mum read the book to me and my brother during long car journeys.

I'm not sure what it is about Moria, but I think that whole sequence is the best plotted and most compelling part of the entire book. It starts with Gandalf trying to work out how to get in. Then, just as he opens the doors, the fellowship are attacked by a hideous creature that lurks in the pool by the gate. After running into safety they hear the doors behind them being barricaded shut. From this point on, the only way out is forward. I guess that's part of the thing - everywhere else the characters have a choice. Here they have no choice. They have to keep going forward. Into the dark.

The gates of Moria

The film actually showed the journey through Moria quite well, although it was obvious immediately that there were no dwarves here. Just dusty, long-dead armoured skeletons. You don't learn that as quickly in the book. You have to wait until the fellowship find the annals of the dwarves who tried to retake Moria. As Gandalf reads the final, hurried entries, with the accounts of which dwarf heroes fell where, the sense of danger and impending doom is truly claustrophobic. Something evil has befallen in the ruins. And it is most likely still out there.

Discovery in the dark

That sense of evil lurking in the ruins is also present early on in The Magician's Nephew, which I think has been my favourite of the Narnia books since I was a kid. Written as a prequel to The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, some time after that book, The Magician's Nephew tells the story of how Narnia came to be, as witnessed by two small children, Digory and Polly, who had been given the opportunity to move between different worlds. But here's the thing. Before they discovered the world that would become Narnia, the two children discovered Charn.

Exploring Charn

Charn was a nearly dead world, a ruinous, gigantic, deserted city under a blood-red, tired sun. Drawn by enchantment, the children enter a hall of kings and queens and wake the last Queen of Charn, a cruel and wicked tyrant called Jadis. She tells them about the grandeur of Charn; the magnificence of the world before it met its doom. And we learn that Jadis was the author of that doom, using a deep and terrible magic to win a civil war against her sister, by extinguishing all other life on the planet.

The mystery of Charn

It's a magnificent, evocative tale, which I always found more interesting than the birth of Narnia that follows. And while it provides an origin story, of sorts, for evil in the good and perfect world of Narnia, the emergence of Jadis in Charn is a much more interesting story. The series of royal statues grow harsher and crueler as the children walk along them, reaching the pinnacle of hatefulness in Jadis. The implication is that power corrupts and poisons people, leading to a situation where a wicked queen would rather eliminate every other living being than not rule over them.

I've often felt this was a commentary by C.S. Lewis on the existence of nuclear weapons and the folly of the idea of mutually assured destruction preventing someone from starting a nuclear war. What if you got someone so totally warped and wicked that they would rather turn the world into a burning atomic husk than allow their opponents to continue to exist?

I'm not sure why as a kid drawn to the idea of ruined civilisations. I think both Moria and Charn exuded a mystery that you didn't get in many imaginary worlds. There was a sense that something has happened here - something terrible. And you need to find out what it was. But finding out won't make it better. In fact, it might make it even more terrible.

But at least you will know.

Celebrating my Mum’s 70th birthday

I was asked to give a speech at my Mum’s 70th birthday party. Here it is. There were a couple of ad libs as well, but I can’t remember them. The asides (in brackets) were scripted.

Honestly, Mum loved it!

This birthday is a bit different to last year – Mum had planned a quiet celebration but then I had some unexpected difficult news and so Mum and Dad came suddenly to Cardiff to see us. Sorry for causing you such an unusual birthday last year, Mum. I hope this year’s makes up for it.

As we prepared for today, my wife Cathy trawled through photo albums and CDs of photos to create a photo exhibit. There are some very funny photos in there. But along with the best-forgotten fashions, and one or two outfits that still look really good, the one constant in so many of the photos are family, friends, people and celebration. We had photos from many previous birthdays and it’s obvious that as a family we mark milestones.

Cathy's hard work

There’s also a photo in there of Mum teaching me when we lived in the Gambia. Mum taught me to read and it wasn’t long before I was reading anything I could get my hands on – including medical journals someone gave me as a joke. [Mum reminded me afterwards that the only word I got stuck on was hypernatremia. For reference, I was 5.]

That shared love of reading and of books has always been something that has brought Mum and me together. When we were very little we had a very wet holiday in the Lake District (I don’t think there’s any other kind!) and we spent a lot of time in the car driving to various places where the rain didn’t matter. Along the way Mum read us chapter after chapter of The Lord of the Rings – and I’m sure my fondness for that book relates to hearing it in Mum’s voice first.

[Actually, Mum told me afterwards that she thinks that was a holiday we had travelling round the South of England, but hey, it’s still true that she read all 1,061 pages to us. And who’s making the speech here, anyway?]

As a teenager I started reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and it wasn’t long before Mum was also fully conversant with the misadventures of Rincewind the wizard and the streetwise cynicism of Captain Sam Vimes. So whether it was the mines of Moria or the streets of Ankh-Morpork, we always had those shared worlds to discuss.

It’s funny the things you learn from your Mum, and what you take with you into adult life. This year I will have been involved in Fair Do’s, the fair trade shop in Cardiff, for 20 years. But I was involved in Shrewsbury Fair Trade first, thanks to Mum.

In fact, I’ve often said the fair trade movement in Britain was built on the back of coerced teenage labour. I lugged a lot of boxes on her behalf – the trade-off was after I dropped her off I could keep the car for a couple of hours. Mum’s car was a Vauxhall Cavalier (the classic 80’s design with the boxy front end). It became my first car in the end until it sadly died of rust and over-use. But ask Mum and she will tell you it was a good car and we both loved it.

So we have memories and milestones, but even on the cusp of 70 my Mum is full of surprises. Just after Christmas we went as a family to see the new Star Wars film. Afterwards, as we left the cinema, Mum said: “Oh that was so much better than those prequel films. The fight scenes were so much more realistic!” (If you think that’s surprising, you should hear her talk about how much she likes Die Hard!)

So, from Middle Earth to a galaxy far, far away, thank you Mum for being there with us. That’s something worth celebrating.

Happy Birthday, Mum!

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (film review)

I thoroughly enjoyed this, despite my misgivings about turning a very short book into three films. I knew there was background stuff that could be developed - e.g. Gandalf's battles with the Necromancer, which is hardly referenced in the book - but I wasn't sure there was enough for three films, particularly as Peter Jackson likes to make very long movies!

However, this zipped by. The story is more fast-paced than the Lord of the Rings, anyway, and I felt introducing more background information, particularly about Erebor, the lost Dwarvish Kingdom, helped the story along.

As in the book, the dwarves seem annoyingly incapable of avoiding scrapes, but Richard Armitage is knock-down brilliant as the exiled Dwarf Prince, Thorin Oakenshield. Sir Ian Mckellan is excellent as Gandalf again, but I'm not sure whether Martin Freeman will forever be regarded as a hobbit, the way Elijah Wood will (and he's back for a cameo). He was good, but he does too many of his trademark double-takes and being polite when offended. Sylvester McCoy was very effective bringing Radagast the Brown to life, as well.

People have already been noting the stand out bits of dialogue. I predict Gandalf's comments about evil being kept at bay through the actions of little people will be much-quoted in the future. I particularly liked the line that real courage is not taking a life but knowing when to spare one. It's the moment when he chooses to let Gollum live that defines Bilbo, and of course spares him from becoming another Gollum under the malign influence of the ring.

There's a lot more to get through for the dwarves and their hobbit burglar. Mirkwood will presumably occupy most of the next film, with a natural ending as Bilbo sneaks into the mountain and meets Smaug for the first time. Then the third film will be mainly the Battle of the Five Armies and Bilbo going home to the Shire, which if the third LOTR film is anything to go by, will involve lots of goodbyes. There are 13 dwarves for him to bid farewell to!

For me the most unexpected thing about this film is how eagerly I now want to see the next two. So, I guess from that point of view, it works well.

Jongudmund's rating: 8/10

Slumdog Millionaire and a few other films

This is the much-touted new film from Danny Boyle, which won some Golden Globes last week and is up for loads of Baftas too. We went to see it as a team outing in appreciation of all our hard work before Christmas.

I honestly thought it couldn't live up to the hype, and yet somehow it did. The cinematography is fantastic. The storyline is a bit twee, but well-written. There's tension and drama and a happy ending which is nice. It manages to convey the sense of India as a place where extremes of wealth and poverty exist, where opportunity and cruel exploitation both occur.

But even though it all works out in the end, it doesn't glamourise the poverty of the slums, or how hard it is to escape. I thought the saddest part of the film was when the hero Jamal meets a boy he knew from the begging ring he used to belong to. This other lad was deliberately blinded because blind beggars earn more money. "You were saved," he tells Jamal, "and that's the difference between us..."

Jongudmund's rating: 9/10 Go and watch it

Some other films

Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Hmmm, they've changed the opening Star Wars music. Bad sign. It's about Anakin and his young 'spunky' sidekick. Uh oh. Jabba the Hutt has a son who's been kidnapped and looks like a cutesy slug... what is going on here?
Jongudmund's rating: 2.5/10 One for hard core fans only, and even then...

Futurama: Bender's Game
I'm not really sure where these feature length movies are going. This one turned into a spoof of Lord of the Rings, but that's been copied/parodied so many times it seems a bit lame to try and send it up again. Although the cavern full of annoying Morks was quite funny. Na noo na noo.
Jongudmund's rating: 4/10 Another one for the afficionados and no one else really

Ella Enchanted
It might just be me but I felt the idea of a girl being enchanted/cursed to be obedient to whatever anyone said disturbing and creepy. Good thing she doesn't live in the real world or she'd wind up in some pretty horrible situations, especially if she was as pretty as Anne Hathaway. The fairy who cast the obedience spell on her never really got her comeuppance either, which annoyed me.
Jongudmund's rating: 4/10. Watch 'Enchanted' instead.

What happens in Vegas
1) I've been to Vegas and it's nothing like this. 2) You can't just get married on a whim in Vegas - that's a myth. You're thinking of Reno. 3) Does anyone out there actually think Cameron Diaz is hot any more?

Actually once you get past it's premise which can't happen, this is quite funny. Some bits of it made me laugh and some made me cringe inwardly, but in a good way. Oh, and if you have nuts and you know what it's like to be whacked in them, there's an eye-watering scene just before the credits. Watch out.
Jongudmund's rating: 6/10 reasonable DVD night in

Writers and editors

The next issue of the magazine is pretty much done from a writing point of view. Now it’s in for editing – a hugely important part of the process. I used to hate having copy I’d written neatened up by an editor, but over time you kind of get immune to it. And recently I’ve been reflecting on how it’s very useful to have someone cast a critical eye over what you write and make sure it’s tidied up.

It’s easy to spot the moment when a writer, or other creative, stops listening to the editor and begins to believe his or her own hype. Here are a few examples…

Example #1 JK Rowling
I risk the ire of Clare for daring to comment on the great JK, but truth to tell her books were better when they were edited to a readable length. But after ‘the Prisoner of Azkaban’, Rowling went stratospheric and no editor was going to tell her ‘look, love, you’ve got to cut this down a bit.’ Cue ‘Goblet of Fire’, which seemed to go on and on and had one of the most ridiculously unlikely twists at the end involving a character who was actually someone else in disguise.

Then the films came out and Harry Potter was suddenly accessible to the majority non-reading population. And JK Rowling decided at this point that she could write epics.

But she can’t.

At least, not if ‘Order of the Phoenix’ is anything to go by. A good editor would have cut about a third to a half of the 500+ pages, got rid of the side stories which added nothing to the basic tale, and produced a good book as a result. Instead all the lickle kiddies had to wade through pages of turgid filler to get to the good stuff. It was so bad I haven’t read book 6 and won’t be reading book 7 either.

Example #2 Oasis
Oasis’ first album remains one of the pinnacles of British rock. It’s got everything – soaring, powerful guitar riffs, Liam’s rock and roll snarl, clever lyrics, all wrapped up in a bundle of decent songs.

But then the Britpop bubble expanded, with Oasis at the centre. I didn’t personally like their second album as much, although it did contain the still-hummable Wonderwall, and one or two other classics. But they were more into slagging off their rivals, saying offensive things in NME, partying and sacking drummers by this point. With nobody around to rein them in, because they were Oasis and weren’t going to be told what to do by anyone, they were able to set their artistic sides free. And what have they done since? Absolutely naff all.

Example #3 George Lucas
Let’s not get into the ‘how did the prequels go so wrong’ discussion here. But let’s ask the question, why does George Lucas feel the need to go back and rework his original films? Not only did he stick a load of stupid animals into the Mos Eisley scenes for cheap laughs in Star Wars, he completely cheesed up the end of Jedi, and hashed up Sy Snootles’ best musical number ever with an annoying new character called Yuzzum.

Then to add insult to injury, in the special edition DVD set he replaced Jeremy Bulloch’s voice in Empire Strikes Back with the antipodean twang of the guy who played Jango Fett in Attack of the Clones.

But of course, Lucas is never one to miss a marketing trick. So, just when you thought you’d bought your last set of Star Wars DVDs, he releases a new set which contain the original versions as well as the ‘remastered’ (insert your own suitable description here) versions. Then he has the cheek to say "I don’t know why anyone would want to watch the original versions…" Because they’re better, George, that’s why. Now why don’t you go and get funky with the original cut of Howard the Duck or Willow.

Example #4 Peter Jackson
You take Lord of the Rings’, one of the most loved books ever written in the English Language. You manage to turn it into three films, which amazingly please the die-hard fans of the book and your average cinema-goer. Now the world is your oyster. You could do pretty much anything you want to.

You go and re-make King Kong…

Man flu film reviews

Being off for a few days with a particularly vicious form of man ‘flu meant I’ve watched quite a few films, including quite a few where I had to take the shrinkwrap cellophane off before watching it! So, after Return of the King, Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Beetle Juice and Pirates of the Caribbean, I got onto a couple of films I hadn’t seen before…

Collateral is perhaps the film which proves Tom Cruise can actually act (unless you think the whole ‘Katie had a baby, so I guess Tom's straight’ thing is a diversion). As in Heat, Michael Mann uses the urban wasteland of LA to great effect, with the city effectively the third major character in the film. The ending is a bit contrived, but the plot works and everybody’s favourite Thetan in disguise puts in a great performance as Vincent. Playing against type as a bad guy clearly works for Tom, so hopefully he’ll take on a few more villainous roles.

Jongudmund’s rating: 8/10

Do you remember when pre-recorded videos were expensive and so you taped films off the telly? I revisited those deprived days of yesteryear and watched a film Cath taped back at Christmas. Down with Love is a ‘screwball comedy’ starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor.

The film’s passable. Ewan McGregor is always good value and David Hyde Pierce is surely one of the most gifted comic actors around, even if he is playing yet another version of Niles Crane. While there are some funny scenes, and some decent dialogue, most of the key scenes are contrived and the performances smelt so much of ham I thought I was in the sandwich meat aisle in Tesco.

The thing which struck me most though, about the film, is that seeing him in thick glasses and a side parting, Ewan McGregor would make a great Clark Kent. Why wasn’t he signed up to play Superman in the limp ‘Returns’? With a knowing smile and a slightly feral glint in his eye, he’d be a fantastic Superman.

Jongudmund’s rating: 5/10

And is it nerdy that when I watched Beetle Juice I recognised Glenn Shaddix's name because he played the Mayor in Nightmare Before Christmas...?

Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang

Bit of an odd film this one, halfway between thriller, comedy and satire on Hollywood. That’s three halves, which is a bit much to cram into any movie and this does suffer as a result. As a comedy it works because Robert Downey Jr and Val Kilmer are very watchable; as a thriller it passes but it’s complicated and a tad contrived; and as a satire, it’s very clever, but it loses its bite halfway through.

The thing that makes this movie stand out though, is that is finally debunks the myth that Americans don’t understand sarcasm. Not only is the sarcastic interplay between the two main characters well-scripted, obviously with an understanding of how wit actually works, but it’s excellently delivered, especially by Kilmer. One of the elements you need to make sarcasm work is a rapid, understated delivery which fools someone into thinking you’re telling him the truth. Kilmer has it and uses it well.

The only downside to the film is Downey Jr’s frequently tiresome narration. It’s hackneyed. Yes, the self-referential stuff is funny (“I’ve seen Lord of the Rings – we aren’t going to have seventeen different endings”), but it frequently interrupts the smooth flow of the story. There’s also quite a bit of swearing and some nudity, so depending on whether you rate or slate a film based on that, this might not be your cup of tea.

Watch it for: the Russian roulette scene – shocking but hilarious (“What? There was only an eight per cent chance…” “You idiot, who taught you math?”).
Skip it if: you don’t like Robert Downey Jr, or hearing the F word.

Jongudmund’s rating 7.5/10

Santa's secret identity

Cath claims that I post things she’s said on here and take credit for them. So, to assuage her accusatory nature, I feel duty bound to point out that most of today’s post was her idea.

Have you ever wondered what Santa does the rest of the year. Well, maybe he’s moonlighting as the Jolly Green Giant. Consider the evidence…

1 – both Santa and the Green Giant say ‘ho ho ho’… but to mask his other identity, Green Giant always adds “Green Giant” at the end of his ho ho ho-ing
2 – you never see Santa and the Green Giant in the same place
3 – Santa used to wear a green outfit until he was famously outfitted by Coca-Cola in an ad campaign that changed popular culture
4 – we know from Lord of the Rings that elves are tall, but in Santa’s workshop they seem really small, which makes sense if Santa is really a giant!

On this day in 1937...

...JRR Tolkien published The Hobbit.

I think The Hobbit was spoilt for me because I read Lord of the Rings first. After that The Hobbit was a bit childish.

See, I can be literary too. It's not all gigs and movies on here.