LEGO Batman, Or Product Placement To Art

Capes Are Impractical

Last Saturday morning, fulfilling a six-month promise to my youngest daughter (age 11), we went to the LEGO Batman Movie... and man alive, is this one *spectacular* piece of marketing. Wrapped in 104 minutes of in-jokes for comic book nerds, cultural references that span five decades, and a great voice acting performance by lead Will Arnett (full disclosure: I am a complete Arnett mark, going back to his work in "Arrested Development", but also "Bojack Horseman"), there's one overwhelming and fairly unrelenting message.

Buy your kids some LEGO.

Or, at the very least, some LEGO video games.

Hell, take them to LEGOland, too. There's probably some cool stuff there. (Confession: I've done this. A long time ago, but it was done. And there is cool stuff there. But let's move on from the free ad.)

Now, this isn't exactly news or surprising, given that the name of the toy is right in the title of the film. The sheer brazenness of the pitch made me completely OK with it, as a marketer, and even as a parent. My 11-year-old isn't quite immune to these pitches, but she's certainly very aware of them, and hasn't asked for more or less Lego in her life than what was there before.

However, just because the toothpaste is out of the tube, but it's good toothpaste and the counter was clean, doesn't exactly make this a wonderful development.

It's not exactly news that the movies are a very compromised art form, with a well-worn mix of casting in four key demographics to pack the house. There's also foreign sensibilities that have to come into play to make back the development and advertising costs, which tends to push things down into the non-verbal stage. With costs in the nine figure range, sequels and transfers from other art forms are rife. If you want to watch something truly ground-breaking or innovative, you are much better off with something on a streaming service or cable provider, where the story telling has more time to establish itself, and there's no need to please more than a niche audience.

The trouble is that just because LEGO does this well, directly and fairly above board, that doesn't mean that every one else in the kid movie market will behave the same, or will do so for work that is of excellent quality. There's something more than a little unseemly about how a movie for kids *has* to have jokes for the parents now, because when you make work for all audiences, you are compromising your effectivenes to some degree, and also your art.

Which seems to not be a big deal when you are dealing with something like an animated movie, and it doesn't all have to be Shakespeare, yes.

But the plain and simple is that there are only so many movies that I'm going to be able to take the kid to, and only so many moments in her childhood that you get to share. And while we had a great time today, I'm not sure how much long-term impact this movie is going to have on her.

Unlike, well, some animated movies that I've taken my kids to. Like "Spirited Away", a legitimately amazing piece of art, or "Iron Giant", or "Up", or "Inside Out"...

All of which, I think, would stay in the mind of the viewer a lot longer than "LEGO Batman."

And probably not make as much money, and certainly won't inspire sequels.

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