3 out of 5

Produced by: Brandon Vietti

Harmless; charming.  The LEGO invasion of video games and movies has successfully navigated into a niche balancing self-aware humor with good doses of franchise / fan appreciation that somehow makes the endless iterations acceptably entertaining.  It’s hard to say why ‘Be-Leagured’ was required, as its outside of any other ‘LEGO’ continuity for DC, and the story isn’t exactly monumental, but by the same token, this feel-good willingness is sorta’ what these things thrive on.

This is the LEGO version of JLA: Year One, super compressed and focused on everyone’s favorite Bat character, as he’s naturally the last holdout for joining up.  The script is able to poke fun at Bats hostile isolation… while keeping a large gangle of sidekicks around… and the various JLAers quirks, but without sinking to outright making fun of characters we’re supposed to love.  The animation is quality and nicely detailed (something that making this a special vs. a TV show allows for), and all of the voice actors are well cast for their parts.  The villains get sort of the short stick, just activating traps of death or spouting one or two key lines, but the presence of the baddies is just to spur Batman to accept the help of his (late spoiler alert) soon-to-be teammates.

Some giggles, though this leans more toward the kid range of ‘all-ages,’ and overall there’s nothing really too grabbing about the plot.  But there’re colors and explosions to keep the youngins involved, and the genre will be enough to make old fat dudes like me watch it.  (We chortle instead of giggle, though.)