DC LEGO Comics Superheroes: Justice League - Gotham City Breakout - Blu-ray Review

Title: Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League - Gotham City Breakout

Movie: :3.5stars:
Video: :4stars:
Audio: :3.5stars:
Extras: :halfstar:

HTS Overall Score:68




Summary
I think this is the 5th or maybe the 6th LEGO DC animated Justice League film, and Warner Brothers seems to have had great success with the young children’s franchise. Much like “Tinkerbell” and “Monster High” for the younger girls, the LEGO Justice League series has targeted the pre-teen male (and some females, as there always is a crossover in super hero films) with great gusto and unleashed the heavily popularized characters with newer, cuter veeners than the stuff that Zack Snyder is putting out these days, or the highly adult DC animated lineup of New 52 rebooted series.

This time around Batman is shanghaied by Nightwing and Batgirl to take an actual vacation for once. He’s been working his bat tail off and it’s high time that he got out of the gloomy city and into a beach house with a margarita and a little umbrella on top of the drink cozy. However, Batman is none too pleased to get out of Gotham, especially with the fact that he’s leaving his city’s safety in the hands of Superman, who’s a bit of an exaggerated boy scout in this series. As he warns the guy in blue pajamas, the villains of Gotham are not like the villains of Metropolis. It doesn’t take long for the Joker to trick the man of steel into releasing the entire population of Arkham Asylum into the general populace, unleashing chaos in their wake. With the entire Gotham villain force out and about it takes more than just Superman to put them back into their cages. With Robin, Cyborg, the Teen Titans, and the rest of the remaining Justice League members they are finally able to restore order.

On the flip side, Batman and his young mentors are having a bit of an adventure of their own. Batgirl and Nightwing decided that they want to reunite Batman with his old mentor, Madame Mantis, who has been off on another world taking care of a race of beings for many years. However, Madame Mantis is in a bit of a pickle, having been kidnapped by Bane and Deathstroke, who are lying in wait for the caped crusader. Now it’s time to have a working vacation and forgo the beach house and margaritas, and instead take care of business.

It’s a silly movie, but still a load of fun for the kids. Classic characters are spun around into a nice kiddy veneer, and still allows for plenty of action to be blended into the scenarios too. If you’ve seen the other DC LEGO animated films than you know exactly what you’re getting into. “Gotham City Breakout” doesn’t forge any new paths, but it plays to the strengths of the genre and just rolls with it. Some may be a bit put off on the dumbness of a few integral characters, but be reminded that this IS a pre-teen children’s show and all.






Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video :4stars:
The 1.78:1 AVC encoded Blu-ray is a solid entry for Warner brothers, and unlike the regular DC animated films, don’t suffer from the excessive banding that plagued the series. Looking much like the other LEGO animated films it sports pretty color and nice saturation levels throughout, and has some really nice details to boot. The digitally animated film manages to make the LEGO characters come to life with natural looking curves and shadows, while still keeping the look of the detachable toys consistent with our childhood toys. Black levels maintain integrity throughout, and while the movie isn’t at PIXAR levels or anything due to the budget, it still is a very pleasing HI-Def image and makes for good watching.







Audio :3.5stars:
The 5.1 DTS-HD MA track is a good track, a bit pedestrian due to the DTV nature of the kid’s film, but still quite good. Dialog is always intelligible to the ear and the movie is filled with tons crash, bang, boom moments as the little toys terrorize Gotham and beyond. Surround activity is a bit limited, and rather soft, but there are still a few moments where the directionality of the track shifts to the back end of the spectrum and envelopes the viewer in a brief moment of 3 dimensionality in the audio department. LFE is nice, never really aggressive, but nice adding some weight to the action oriented pieces of the film. Overall it’s a nice track that just isn’t really asked to do a whole lot besides support the dialog and add some crashes, booms and bangs to the experience.









Extras :halfstar:

• Trailer for "Lego Scooby Do"











Overall: :3.5stars:

As with the rest of the DC LEGO films, this take on the classic superheroes is firmly aimed for the children of the household rather than you or I. That doesn’t make it a bad experience, but the kiddy humor and cute take on the action oriented characters fits better in the 10 and under audience rather than grabbing a beer with the guys (or gals as the case may be). Audio and video are solid enough for the direct to video film and the story is a lot of fun (I feel kind of guilty saying I rather enjoyed it). Definitely a fun watch if you have pre-teen kids.


Additional Information:

Starring: Sarah Hyland, Troy Baker, Tara Strong
Directed by: Matt Peters, Melchior Zwyer
Written by: James Krieg
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, French, German, Spanish, Polish, Japanese DD 5.1, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegion, Swedish DD 2.0
Studio: Warner
Rated: NR
Runtime: 78 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: July 12th, 2016




Buy Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: Justice League - Gotham City Breakout On Blu-ray at Amazon

Recommendation: Skip It/Low Rental​

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