Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

The Lego Batman Movie

It’s no surprise that Batman, as a character, has been portrayed so frequently on the screen, big and small. He’s a misunderstood figure whose brooding vigilante act is a direct result of a tragedy in his past. Tim Burton did a handy job with him in 1989 and Christopher Nolan did a fine job with him in the 2000s, but is Lego really the team to tackle such a weighty character? If the Adam West Batman TV series is any indication, then the answer is yes. And it was.

Voiced by Will Arnett, this incarnation of Batman is as selfish and misanthropic as you might expect. That his loneliness and refusal to accept help fuels so much comedy endears him to the audience in ways the prior versions haven’t. The Lego Batman Movie gets to the heart of the character in ways that one would never have imagined possible from an animated comedy. Yet, this may be the deepest, most profound version of the character yet introduced.

While the voice-over work done for the heroes is quite compelling, much of the rest of the vocal work is less than stellar. The animation is intensely imaginative and the writing is superb. Some of the events are a touch too corny, but the perpetual homage to prior incarnation is refreshing and pointedly biting. It might not have the same appeal to children as it will to adults, but it’s sure to please both audiences regardless if for the same reasosn.

Passengers

There are many problems afoot in Morten Tyldum’s Passengers, a sci-fi spectacle starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, but a surfeit of production values is not one of them.

As a ship of 5,000 passengers and several hundred crew members hibernate on their 120-year journey to a new homestead on a world far far away, a malfunction of one of the pods brings mechanic and engineer Jim Preston (Pratt) out of his sleep 90 years too early. From there, the problems escalate. When he’s joined in his wakefulness by a journalist (Jennifer Lawrence), romance blooms, but the myriad problems are just getting worse and, before too long, everything is going wrong and their lives, as well as those of the other passengers, are at severe risk.

Pratt and Lawrence are solid playing character archetypes they have long ago perfected. Their romantic chemistry is mostly believable, but not exceptionally so. Michael Sheen makes an uneven addition to the cast as the robot bartender that councils the pair. The plotting is utterly and irredeemably predictable. The audience will guess almost every plot device and turning point that comes up. Thankfully, they have a strong score and gorgeous production design to help alleviate the occasional fits of listlessness they may experience.