Lego DC Comics Super Heroes: The Flash (2018)

Movie Info

Hey…haven’t you tried this whole Speed Force thing before?

The Joker has attacked Metropolis and this means the Justice League must step in…but where is the Flash?  Late to the party, the Flash finds himself faced with a strange rival who races him and traps him in a time loop.  Now, the Flash has lost his connection to the Speed Force and the world hates him as Reverse Flash makes his move for “Greatest Hero in the World”!  Can Flash regain his power and return to save the day?

Directed by Ethan Spaulding, Lego DC Comics Super Heroes:  The Flash is an animated DC Comics superhero movie.  Following Lego DC Comics Super Heroes:  Justice League—Gotham City Breakout in 2016, the movie won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Sound Editing for an Animated Program.

The straight-to-video Lego movies are simple charm.  They aren’t as clever as the big screen pictures and largely rest on if you enjoy the humor or not.  As a person who plays the Lego video games and still enjoys putting together Legos, movies like Lego DC Comics Super Heroes:  The Flash are a fun, quick escape.

Jazz-hands!!!

The movie is kid oriented, but it is also very comic book oriented.  Take out a lot of the jokes, and you have a rather typical Flash adventure.  The Flash vs. Reverse Flash has been a theme for years in Flash comics (obviously), but the storyline of the Reverse Flash trying to steal the Flash’s powers is something that will be very familiar to viewers…and it could be a good segue for younger viewers to start to get more interested in comic books (in a less violent way than some of the movies).

The story is all about the heroes and most of the “solo” Lego movies feature a back-up hero.  In this outing, the Atom gets a lot of play (along with the “Super Pets”).  With little having being done with the Atom on the big screen, it is nice for the traditional Atom (as opposed to the more modern Atom of something like Legends of Tomorrow).  I’d love to see more of the Atom (and of course other supporting characters like Plastic Man and Firestorm).

All in a days work for the Justice League

Visually the Lego DC Comics Super Heroes movie are not as complex than their big screen counterparts.  The movies do not utilize stop motion and are computer animation.  With a Lego movie, the visuals are important for a lot of the jokes (like Cyborg falling apart) and the filmmakers do a good job utilizing that.

Lego DC Comics Super Heroes:  The Flash is a basic and simple entry into a better than average but not great series.  The jokes could be better and the stories could be tighter, but Lego spoiled the viewers with the first couple big screen Lego movies which showed the full potential of the building blocks as a story device.  I will always give Legos a chance and will check out what they bring next.  Lego DC Comics Super Heroes:  The Flash was followed by Lego DC Comics Super Heroes:  Aquaman—Rage of Atlantis in 2018.