The Lego Ninjago Movie (Dir Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, & Bob Logan, 1h 41m)

Three films into the Lego Cinematic Universe (sure, it's not officially called that, but with its unified theme, its characters well-aware that their world can be rebuilt into new things, and so-on, you come up with a better name), the cracks are beginning to show. The Lego Ninjago Movie is an entirely serviceable send-up cum homage to wuxia, Japanese anime, Kaiju monster movies, and Super Sentai, but where The Lego Batman and The Lego movies felt more like films subverting the little plastic world that could so easily been just a feature-length advert, Ninjago, with a few exceptions, plays it entirely straight. As a result, what we get is a visually arresting but strangely lopsided feature that sometimes feels like a touch away from falling apart.

Where the film is undoubtedly strongest is in its utter, unabashed love for everything from anime-esque mayhem to Hong Kong kung-fu action-the action scenes are, in places, better than Lego Batman, with mecha (giant robots) of all shapes and sizes, kung fu, a giant (and entirely live action) cat destroying a city in Godzilla aping fashion (hello, by the way, to the one person who promptly mentioned the 1971 episode, "Kitten Kong" of beloved British comedy series, The Goodies). Hell, the film's opening logos are a wonderfully reverent homage to the home of kung fu movies, the Shaw Brothers. The main characters of Lloyd (Dave Franco) and his crew of easy-to-identify, colour-and-trait codified heroes are straight from shows like Voltron, Power Rangers, and range from red-themed fire wielding Kai, (the cool kid) to water-powered Nya (the, uh, token girl).

Herein lies the first problem of the film:these characters are already pretty damn well developed-eight seasons worth of developed, all of which is swept under the carpet, as the film busies itself with setting things up in a radically different way. It would be one thing to either set this film as a big-screen finale or origin story, but as it's presented, it feels like a small slap in the face for committed long-term fans, perhaps doubly so, as the rich world that the series built is stripped away and oversimplified.

Regardless, as in the original series, the team pilot various mecha, (water spider, dragon, bipedal mech, mech with a big wheel flying mech, all sold separately, £40-£60 each, get your kid one), against multiarmed, and quickly revealled to be terrible absent parent (and supervillain) Garmedon. Garmedon is, without a question, the best single thing about this movie, largely due to Justin Theroux playing him as a brilliantly weird mix of deadbeat dad, Shredder from TMNT, Darth Vader and every recurring but never-quite-defeated anime/cartoon villain ever-much of the comedy, unsurprisingly. comes from the mixture of supervillainry and being, well, an absent father-there's a great scene when Lloyd (to his eternal annoyance referred to as L-Loyd), confronts his father only to find that the villain has little to no remorse to leaving his mother.

The problem is that, towards the end of the film, the script goes back and forth on Garmedon being a good (or conversely bad) parent so much  that the admittedly sweet father-son bonding scenes in the interim where the two of them are forced to work together seem like filler. Garmedon's other major foil (Jackie Chan, who essentially barely breaks out of "magical Asian" territory, even in his dual role as the live action owner of a Chinese curio shop), is a likable enough mentor, but Chan is barely in the film long enough to be particularly memorable. The rest of the cast float between amusing-Garmedon's various quickly replaced lieutenants, Lloyd's mother, and barely there-most of the ninja team.

This, in fact, is the other issue with the film-too many characters are reduced to bare stereotypes-whilst the original show fleshed out each of the ninja team to a great extent, here the focus is very much on Lloyd and his relationship with his father-the problem is that the aesop of father-son bonding is the entire focus on the film-even Garmedon's own back story is reduced to a couple of (admittedly beautifully paced and realised scenes). Even when compared to the various Saturday morning serials that this series takes influence from, the rest of Lloyd's team are barely two, let alone three dimensional. Even the film's key idea of finding one's own inner piece (peace?) is a muddled and somewhat half-hearted element that never really goes anywhere and leads to a slightly disappointing finale.

The problem is that, throughout the hour and a half of this film's short run time, I felt, in sharp comparison to the other two excellently put together, sharply satirical and endlessly inventive films, Ninjago is a little bit...safe, a little too commercial. Not just tonally-this is a film in which, despite our heroes' hometown being destroyed by a giant cat, they're little more than ticked off with Lloyd, but in the very sense of this feeling like a film, rather than a feature length, if beautifully shot, advert. As a result, this ninja-escapade is the first wrong step of a franchise that has otherwise subverted exactly what this film is: a toy advert, for fairly expensive toys.

Rating: Recommended