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For a film about someone who only works in black, Batman hasn’t been this colourful since the dark light nineties movies by Joel Schumacher, if you thought that reference was heavily batman retrospective you clearly haven’t seen Lego Batman yet.

This movie knows its dark knight and when it’s not merely referencing bits of previous films its outright showing them to you clips of Adam West dancing as the caped crusader. ‘Lego Batman’ being a spin off from 2014s ‘The Lego movie’ and is packed with as much care and detail as its predecessor, if not as much heart.

In short it’s a serviceable and mostly enjoyable movie packed to the gunnels with references and the a wide scale cross over off all those franchises Lego owns with dark wizard and British robots tearing through a brick built world with well setup jokes.

Bright, fun and funny this is a recommended watch for fans of frenetic action comedy with a solid sense of humour that got some out loud laughs out of me, but its weakest link is the Batman himself. Lego batman, although not as engaging with its character is still just as bright, colourful and crammed with as much attention to detail as it predecessor, it looks fantastic with the rendering of its brick world lively and interesting on every scene.

Now, I must make a small aside here to talk abou that recurring thing with movies, where a side character (usually the comic relief) is given their own movie to greater success like the babbling yellow Minions or to a lesser acclaim, like Pixars Cars 2, which stands a shining example of why a character who is tolerable in small doses should not be given the main screen time. I personally have a strong distaste for Maters bumbling simpleton shtick in both entries of the Cars franchise and Batman hits me in very much the same way. A side character who’s arrogant swagger was acceptable in The Lego movie but wears thin throughout Lego Batman even as his story ark moves along to try and accept help from others.

All that said Batman doesn’t drag the film down as the rest is buoyant enough to keep things light and engaging, it will be worth a repeat view just to keep an eye on all the back ground detail and jokes, if not the story which centres mostly around the Jokers attempt to get Batman to acknowledge him as his worst enemy, all played off as a jilted lover in a heavily one sided relationship.

It knows its Batman lore, the opening scenes where the Joker heads a parade of the caped crusaders rogues gallery run through and array from the famous and feared to ridiculous and ineffectual oddities that gets a fourth wall nod where the audience is prompted to look these guys up to confirm that yes, they are real characters. Not just the villains are ineffectual but it also pokes that the Batman universe police who are all too happy to press the button to light up the bat symbol and call the job done for every problem.

The trailer for the Lego Ninjago movie that came before film doesn’t have the name draw of its precursors but it promises more of the same quality of production and writing on display here so I will give that a shot in time.

In conclusion this is a good movie, not as good as the Lego movie but still worth its time even as a giant product placement to sell more Lego sets made of only black or sometimes very, very dark grey.