"Lego: Batman the Movie: DC Super Heroes Unite"

Welcome to this review of Lego: Batman the Movie: DC Super Heroes Unite. Now, I have a disclaimer before I get into this review; I did not really play with Legos growing up. So, anyway, I might be a little bit more harsh on the movie than somebody who did grow up with Legos. But, I did really like the Lego Movie which was in theaters last year and was a major award contender (but not for the Oscars). I am, however, a HUGE Batman fan (which may negate the previous disclaimer).

Background

This movie was released in 2013 (which was a year before The Lego Movie). That's where the facts stop. I have a hypothesis on why the movie was made: MONEY! If you call the Super Mario Bros. movie a “video game movie”, this movie is literally a “video game movie” because they use the scenes from Lego Batman II. But, “they replaced the gameplay with new scenes with the same actors” (to quote Wikipedia). And that's about it...Oh, one more thing; you do not hear Will Arnett as Batman – it's Troy Baker (just to let you guys know).

Plot

Bruce Wayne, tycoon billionaire, and Lex Luthor are both nominated for Gotham City's very prestigious “Man of the Year Award” which brings them together. And, (spoiler alert!) Lex Luthar did not win – “Better luck next year.” (to quote Bruce Wayne in the movie). But, of course, Lexxy is none too happy playing second fiddle to Brucy. During the ceremony, the festivities got ambushed by The Joker. Naturally, Lex teams up with The Joker to cause chaos and, ultimately, win the Presidential Election.

Opinion:

Now, this movie was not that bad. The humor was far and away not as funny as The Lego Movie, but the voice acting was good. Overall, it's your basic superhero story of “good vs. evil” where “good” predictably triumphs. I would have focused more on the politics angle of Luthor running for president...Which leads me to a major plot hole – at first, in the movie, you think that Lex is running in the middle of the primaries, but, you find out that it is actually the day before election day. Which begs the question; Who is the other candidate? Who is Luthor's running mate? Now, I am going talk about what kids want to see as opposed to what a mature audience is looking for in an entertaining movie. Younger audiences mainly want to see the “superhero action”; however, adults want more story. When you have a movie about Lex Luthor running for president, we want to see the campaign leading up to it. Now, if you want to see Lex running for president, I have two movies for you to check out. The first one is the Bruce Timm Justice League series featuring the third and forth season particularly. That gives you every in-and-out of his campaign. The other thing that you could check out is Superman and Batman: Public Enemies which doesn't give you details about his campaign but does fill you in on what happens after he wins. One more thing before I conclude; the animation is not really that bad – for a direct to DVD movie, but why in the world did the movie need be made with Legos? As for my rating of the movie: I give it 3 stars! If you are a hard-core Batman fan or a young kid, it's worth your time. If not, this is a good one to skip. This movie is average. Goodnight, and Bee Happy!™

BY Mr. Bee  

copyright 2015 Mr. Bee Studio International All rights belong to Mr. Bee and webmaster Wesley M. and if anybody breaks this copyright they will have to spend ten years as my personal slave, and thanks for your understanding. 

images courtesy of  AT&T Inc./The Lego Group and Mango Bollywood respectively.

" The Land Before Time III: The Time of the Great Giving "

Welcome, I am finally here to review the Land Before Time III movie. The last time we took a look at Little Foot and his Friends was back in September (why I took so long to review this was that after watching The Land Before Time ll I needed therapy).

Now this is the 8^th month anniversary of Mr. Bee's brilliant movie buzz. A lot of things have changed since I started this blog back in August, for instance, Brian Williams was still the most trusted of newscasters, but now he has been suspended for 6 months without pay and it is unsure if he will be returning.

I'm sure you are wondering who the winner is from my end of the year poll, and the winner is --- Peter Pan Live!!! (Ironically enough, it stars Allyson Williams who is the daughter of Brian Williams).

Now, back to the movie at hand ;

Background

Just to let you know I found little almost no behind the scenes facts about this movie, (but I know why this movie was made: one word, “MONEY”). This would be a good time to mention what I forgot to mention in my previous Land Before Time reviews: the first movie was made during a major switch of power at Universal (Is this important? Probably not, but it is interesting). What is important is that the sequels were made without any involvement from the people who made the first movie (that means no Don Bluth, no George Lucas, no Stephen Spielberg and not even Kathleen Kennedy). The lll movie I am talking about now is directed by Roy Allen Smith. Moving on;

Plot

This movie is mostly about Little Foot and his friend's bullying troubles. Then there is another sub plot when the Great Valley has water problems, and another subplot about fire safety (I will explain later).

Opinion

First of all, lets get the bad stuff out of the way: the lip syncing is awful in this movie! There are some scenes where the characters lips don't even move when they are talking. Concerning the subplot about fire safety (spoiler alert!) they had one single mention of it at the beginning of the movie and basically then that's it until around the end of the movie (spoiler alert!) when a big forest fire happens and then the Great Valley is destroyed (I would have less problems with the subplot if they kept going back to it). I liked the opening narration although but there was just one problem with it, when they started introducing the characters because this is the third movie and I don't feel it was necessary; imagine if the Return of The Jedi did this “In a galaxy far far away we find our heroes Chewbacca (the Wookie), R2D2, C3PO, (the Robots), Hans Solo, (a loner), Princess Leah, ( a Princess ), Luke Skywalker, (a Jedi in training), all banded together to fight the evil Darth Vader (the bad guy )”. Some of the voice acting is good, but the majority of the voice cast needs to go back to acting school. The songs are bad but there is one song which would have been good but Scott McAfee (voice of Little Foot) does not have a very good singing voice. The Animation also leaves much to be desired.

At the beginning of the movie there was a meteor shower. Later on we see that the waterfall in the great valley is no longer flowing(spoiler alert!). They don't tell us why the waterfall stopped flowing until the end of the movie when we find out that it was the meteor shower that caused it. This made the movie very predictable since we already had figured out why the waterfall had stopped flowing. (If the adults had figured out why the waterfall had stopped flowing and done something about it, the movie would have been a lot shorter. What we got instead was a lot of useless adults).

Now we move on to the positives. I do not have a problem with the bullying messages because it is good to teach kids to stand up to bullies. But with that said, all I was thinking about when I was watching this is that there were so many times the kids had been nearly eaten by sharp teeth and fallen off cliffs, I don't know how many times, that I think they can handle the bullies. (spoiler alert!) The fire at the end was very well done. The speech that Cera's dad makes about too much yelling at your kids was very tastefully done. This movie is not the best in the series thus far but it is not the worst either. This movie currently has a 60% critics rating and a 38% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This movie won the Annie Award for Best Animated Home Entertainment Production. I am rating The Land Before Time III a 2 out of 5 star rating. Join me next time for my review of Peter Pan Live.

Good Night and Bee Happy!

By Mr. Bee

  

                                       

 

copyright 2015 Mr. Bee Studio International All rights belong to Mr. Bee and webmaster Wesley M. and if anybody breaks this copyright they will have to spend ten years as my personal slave, and thanks for your understanding. 

images courtesy of Comcast Corporation and  Nina Soden - WordPress.com respectively.