‘The Lego Batman Movie’ Review: Animated Superhero Saga Clicks Spoof to Sincerity

Less a sequel to “The Lego Movie” than a big-screen, family-friendly version of Adult Swim’s blackout-sketch show “Robot Chicken,” “The Lego Batman Movie” gleefully parodies every mass-media iteration of its hero, from the serials to “Super Friends” and from Adam West to Ben Affleck.

While hard-core devotees will enjoy an overflowing basket of Easter eggs, you don’t have to be a super-fan to enjoy its crafty mix of outlandish verbal humor and outrageous visuals.

(His staccato braggadocio will sound familiar to anyone covering the White House these days.) The film opens with Batman saving Gotham City for the umpteenth time from the evil machinations of the Joker (voiced by Zach Galifianakis), who has gathered together all of the hero’s C-list villains, including Calendar Man, Gentleman Ghost, Egghead and Condiment King.

With Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson) taking over for her father Jim as commissioner — she graduated at the top of her class at “Harvard for Police” — the Joker turns himself and all of his cohorts in, partly to remove Batman’s reason for existence and partly as an elaborate ruse that involves the Phantom Zone and the many nefarious villains therein.

Batman is such a jerk that he’s willing to put his newly adopted son Dick Grayson (Michael Cera) into a Robin outfit just so the kid can face certain death when they break into Superman’s Fortress of Solitude (where the Justice League is having a swinging party to which Batman has not been invited).