Movie Review: Batman Unlimited - Animal Instincts

Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts


Amidst all the big talk about the upcoming Justice League movies, the more mature themes tackled by the live-action TV series and the darker, grittier New 52 inspired DC universe movies, in 2015 DC released this little odd piece -- Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts. Batman is unquestionably the most popular DC character, and in addition in starring in DC's first forays in animation (Superfriends and the 60's Batman cartoon), Batman has had several extremely well-received adaptation. The long-running and award-winning Batman: The Animated Series that spawned a decade-long cartoon continuity, the rebooted The Batman (2004-2008), the highly hilarious and campy Batman: the Brave and the Bold (2009-2011) and the all-CGI Beware the Batman (2011-2014)... 2015 was a year where there was no Batman cartoon series with DC media putting most of its efforts to directing live-action adaptations, be it the TV shows or the movies. And at that point, the DCAOM movies, direct-to-DVD movies based on the most prominent comic books, have taken off so much that the higher-ups have decided to double down on it. But the offerings in 2014 and 2015 have been relatively dark and gritty, with variable degrees of quality, so someone up in DC decided to go, hey, why don't we make a light-hearted Batman movie for the younger audience?

(I reviewed its sequel, Monster Mayhem, a while back. It was definitely a lot more polished than this one, that's for sure)

The result... doesn't quite work that well, to be honest. I absolutely get that they're trying to set a light-hearted TAS-style tone that kids can enjoy without everything being so dark and gloomy all the time, but the dialogue is utterly insipid with several characters actually taking the time to point out the funny joke that happened a scene ago -- jokes that aren't even funny. The pacing is horrible, and all the characters are divided into 'Batman', 'wiseass good guy' and 'flat villain', and there is an insane amount of focus on the three Transformer robot animals for no good reason. They could've gone and explored Man-Bat or Penguin's motivations, too, but beyond Penguin being angry at the people for mocking him and thus wanting to drop a meteor on Gotham City there really isn't much to go on. Batman: TAS, Justice League, Superman: TAS, The Batman, Teen Titans... all these other older cartoons were aimed towards the same target audience that this movie is, and those had decent dialogue, decent pacing, actual storytelling and jokes that, if not entirely funny all the time, at least worked out. Did we need an extended sequence of Flash being batted around by gorillas? Or the very awkwardly done Nightwing-believes-in-Flash moment?

The pacing's also all sorts of wonky, with so much screentime devoted on the robot dog/bat/cat things, while a lot of the fight scenes against the actual Animilitia ends up being either more of the same or just fights that could be avoided. In the final stretch of the fight scenes, how many times did Penguin, Killer Croc and Cheetah break their way out of their bindings? Plus despite going through all the trouble to include multiple heroes, Nightwing, Red Robin and Flash sound like nearly the same character -- Flash just cracks speed-related jokes.

I dunno. It feels forced, and while there are a lot of pretty colourful fight scenes, the general slipshod quality of both dialogue, music and pacing just makes this a long, long drag to watch through. The focus on the robot animals is also bizarre unless there's a Batman-and-robot-wolf toyline they're promoting that I'm not aware of? Also what's with all the furries? I get that Penguin probably recruits villains that are rejected by society as he was, but that ends up being a weird plot point that was never explicitly addressed.

The movie also takes place in a futuristic Gotham City with hovercars and giant colourful skyscrapers and shit which doesn't exactly feel like Gotham City. And the big mystery of just 'is Penguin evil?' 'is Man-Bat evil?' just doesn't take hold since they're, y'know, quite obviously evil and redeemable from the get-go even for someone not familiar with the Batman lore.

Speaking about the good parts of the movie, some of the action scenes were pretty cool, with Nightwing versus Cheetah being a highlight... but it's definitely not quite enough to salvage this movie from mediocrity. The character designs were pretty cool (Killer Croc aside, which looks out of place and like he was rejected from a TMNT cartoon). Penguin's got a pretty cool voice actor too, standing out above the others, it's a shame he doesn't get any really good lines either. Oh, and I'm happy to see Tim Drake finally appear in something animated after nearly a decade. And I definitely appreciated Batman swapping in and out of weird wacky costumes that fit the job.

I just don't really have much to say about it, to be honest. I generally don't mind more light-hearted takes on the superheroes, being a big fan of Teen Titans and what little of what I saw of Batman: the Brave and the Bold, but this movie is just kind of falls short. I dunno.