Batman and Harley Quinn fans it's so rare I get to review a movie with both characters and yes I know i've looked at a movie yesterday which featured both of them but this is the only one to have both of there names in the title.As with my last review and my next one this is a movie that i've already reviewed and well I had a choice to make do I review this movie or do I review what i'm going to be reviewing hopefully tomorrow and if you've seen the title you know my choice so here is my review of Batman And Harley Quinn.
The plot of the movie is Poison Ivy and Jason Woodrue aka the Floronic Man team up to turn everyone on earth into living plants and it's up to the dynamic duo with some help from Harley Quinn to put a stop to it. Honestly it's really hard for me to comment on the plot since this is a much more comedic take on the characters and so the plot feels more like a Looney Tunes cartoon I will say tho that the plot was very easy to follow.
The plot of the movie is Poison Ivy and Jason Woodrue aka the Floronic Man team up to turn everyone on earth into living plants and it's up to the dynamic duo with some help from Harley Quinn to put a stop to it. Honestly it's really hard for me to comment on the plot since this is a much more comedic take on the characters and so the plot feels more like a Looney Tunes cartoon I will say tho that the plot was very easy to follow.
Starring in this film is the legend that is Kevin Conroy as Batman / Bruce Wayne , Della Duck as Poison Ivy / Pamela Isley , Loren Lester as Nightwing / Dick Grayson , Kevin Michael Richardson as Floronic Man / Jason Woodrue , John DiMaggio as Swamp Thing / Alec Holland , Austin Powers star Mindy Sterling as Project Supervisor and Big Bang Theory star Melissa Rauch as Harley Quinn / Dr. Harleen Quinzel.
Yeah i;m not going to lie one of the only reasons I even considered doing this review was because of how good Melissa Rauch is as Harley Quinn and I hope that she gave co-star Kaley Cuoco advice on how to play her. Her performance in this movie is the exact performance which is right for the character it's the right balance of crazy and insane and honestly when I heard she was in the movie I knew right away how Harley would sound and it works. As for the rest of the cast there really good of course Kevin is great as Batman to me and many others he is the voice of Batman and this was something that I didn't know but the voice of Della Duck from the new Ducktales is in this movie and she's awesome.
The animation for the film was for once not by MOI Animation but instead by DR Movie who have mainly worked on anime including my favourite anime film of all time Ghost In The Shell they also did work on season 3 of Avatar among many other shows and movies. Honestly the animation really did impress me because they somehow managed to capture the look of Batman: The Animated Series really well even to the point of using the exact same designs for some of the characters.
Now something that i'm noticing more and more is that whenever Warner Bros releases a more mature DC animated movie they always like to have two characters "get together" I don't know why that is but it's a weird trend. It's not even something the fans want to see in these movies so one has to wonder are the directors doing it because they have the hots for one of the characters and in two out of three films where this happens it's in a scene with Harley Quinn.
I'm not quite sure if anyone else got this vibe but to me the tone of this film is very similar to that of the 60's Batman show. That's actually not a bad thing at least in my opinion since every so often we need a Batman film that's just funny but when you also add in the fact that this film is meant to be set in the same world as the animated Batman series then it creates an issue because the tones of both shows just don't add up at all.
What I thought was an interesting choice apart from the name of the movie is the fact that in the movie Harley is trying to go straight. We've seen her try going straight in the comic books before but it's never been seen in anything outside of them so it was interesting to see how the film makers would try this angle heck not even the live action Suicide Squad movie did this and they basically had the character as the hero of the film. Another interesting thing I think is that they have Harley share the title with Batman which I know doesn't seem like much of a big deal but when you count the fact that Batman is a huge name so the fact that they were willing to let someone else appear in the title to me says they have huge faith in the character.
Now this film does actually have two comic books based on it the first was a prequel which lasted for five issues called Harley Quinn and Batman the second is set after the movie and rather confusingly is also called Batman And Harley Quinn (now you see why I added the word film in the title) which lasted for seven issues. I don't get why this movie needed two tie in comic books one would have been more then enough and why is the name of the second comic the exact same as the name of the movie that's just confusing.
I'm just going to come out and say it this movie is funny as hell and since you can see the above picture you can tell what my favourite joke was. It's not for the reason you think it is because fart jokes aren't funny to me what makes this joke funny is Batman's reaction to it he just remains stone faced the entire time and has the best line to follow it "It's not so bad. It smells like... discipline." That right there is a great response and it's how you make a fart joke actually funny.
What didn't work at least in my opinion was the ending it felt really anti-climatic it was like the makers of the film were rushing to get to the end and chose not to put in a proper ending and so just took the easy way out. I will say tho that the action in the film when we can actually see it is pretty good it's not as crazy as it perhaps should have been given the tone but given that this is a straight to DVD movie the action is fine.
Overall was this a good Batman movie no no it wasn't but was it a fun one your damn right it was and sometimes that's all you want just something which is fun to watch and so with that in mind this film gets a 5.5 out of 10 from me.