The Lego Ninjago Movie 3D

Still plenty entertaining and occasionally very funny, "Ninjago" nonetheless displays symptoms of diminishing returns, and Lego might want to shuffle its pieces a bit before building yet another film with this same model.

I’m sorry to report that the Lego movie enterprise has lapsed into intentional mediocrity.

The franchise is showing signs of fatigue but for now, there's enough here to play with.

There are clever touches along the way – such as a subliminal pun on the phrase "inner peace" – but the plot sticks relentlessly to the most reductive version of the "hero's journey" formula.

Starting to look more than a little threadbare and committee-written.

A perfectly adequate family film for kids who love watching things they've seen many times before (which is to say, most kids), it offers plenty of chuckles for their parents but nothing approaching the glee of that first Lego Movie.

So much screen time is devoted to paternal-abandonment issues that it seems more like The LEGO Kramer vs. Kramer Movie. And about as fun.

Although it doesn’t hit as well as The LEGO Movie or The LEGO Batman Movie, The LEGO Ninjago movie is still a delight, and a promising path forward for future LEGO spinoffs.