The Lego Batman Movie is the perfect film to escape into for ninety minutes, and its message of friendship, co-operation, and teamwork is downright inspiring. A lot of the film's emotional strength is reflected in its original songs, including the touching "I Found You," which features the cherubic Dick Grayson recounting the happiness he discovered in his adopted family.

It might be a leftover result of Fredric Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, but Batman comics rarely truly cut to the emotional core of the Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson relationship. You might see it with Bruce and Damian, but Bruce's adoption of Dick has never really been put into so many words before, kept at a distance by the archaic word "ward."

Yet there's something incredibly vulnerable about a man orphaned as a child taking in another orphan, and while The Lego Batman Movie is a jokey-joke film for babies, it has one of the most nuanced takes on Bruce Wayne's loss and reluctance to find a new family, in any medium.

We are both the same

I'm Dick Grayson and you're Bruce Wayne

Though we both have different names

We're born to save the day

The opening lines of "I Found You" is some of the tightest storytelling I've ever seen when it comes to Batman and Robin, and honestly it could be up there with Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's iconic All-Star Superman intro for how much it conveys in so little time. It's also such a drastically different approach to the aggro-macho Batman in his own songs --- like "I'm The (Bat)Man" --- that it comes with an inherent honesty that makes it all the more affecting.

 

 

The rest of the film's original songs are killer too, and I'm not ashamed to say that I nearly teared up over the song "Friends Are Family." There aren't many films aimed directly at children that tell you that family comes in all shapes and sizes, and a family that you choose is just important as the one you're born into.

Plus, Alfred's rocking guitar solo totally rules.

 

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