Movie Review: Batman and Harley Quinn

Batman and Harley Quinn [2017]

Batman: The Animated Series is the definitive superhero cartoon for me, a so-far unmatched masterpiece as far as comic book adaptations go, keeping a masterful balance of original material and faithful adaptations, featuring great voice acting and compelling characters, able to tell episodic stories while still giving their characters great personality and development, even the villains. It spawned a retooled sequel-version of itself, The New Batman Adventures, as well as several great-quality sequels: Superman, Batman Beyond, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.

It's been over a couple of decades, and I still cannot get over how good Batman: TAS is. A not insignificant amount of nostalgia probably is part of the reason, I'll admit, but there's a reason I reviewed Batman: TAS's sequels and spinoffs and not that series itself. It's one of the few pieces of fiction that I do not personally think I can be completely objective about.

Recently, though, the TAS team has been brought back for a couple of the direct-to-DVD DC original animated movies, with the alternate-universe JLA: Gods and Monsters, they haven't really done one that could feasibly fit in as something akin to a sequel that could feasibly fit into the continuity. The TAS team, headed by Bruce Timm, returned to capitalize on Harley Quinn's surge of popularity from last year's Suicide Squad movie to produce a movie titled 'Batman and Harley Quinn', using basically models and the animation style of the New Batman Adventures, with voice actors Kevin Conroy and Loren Lester reprising their roles as Batman and Nightwing, while Melissa Rauch takes over from Arleen Sorkin as Harley Quinn. The voice-acting is pretty fantastic, with the other main characters -- Poison Ivy and Floronic Man -- being well done as well.

Batman and Harley Quinn is a story that could sort of fit in the events after TNBA, but plays hard-and-fast with continuity. A brief glance shows that there's nothing that really contradicts the TAS continuity, as far as I can tell, but I don't think it's meant to fit snugly in the TAS continuity. (The whole Swamp Thing mythology is clearly new to the TAS-verse, though, something that was unavailable when making JLU due to licensing problems)..

It certainly is a fun romp, although it's hardly a perfect show. I squeed with glee when the movie starts off,  with a familiar but lovingly updated animation style, when Kevin Conroy's Batman voice thundered through my television screen once more, and, yeah. The movie's a lot more light-hearted and comedic, and a lot raunchier than Batman: TAS, with shits and goddamns being dropped all over the place (though that's normal as far as the direct-to-DVD DC movies go) and, well, there's no way to slice it -- a larger portion of obvious fanservice.

And there are honestly large portions of the movie that feel to act as nothing but extended gags that didn't quite work. Harley Quinn's hilarious, of course, with a lot of her dialogue being well-delivered (a lesser voice actor would've been unable to make some of her ramblings work) and animated, but there's a musical bit in the middle of the show that didn't serve much purpose, I think, beyond showing Harley gyrating and shaking her ass. There's a fart joke in the batmobile, that, while funny initially, ran on and on and on. There's the weird bondage implied-sex-scene between Harley and Nightwing, which, while nowhere as in poor taste as the Batman/Batgirl sex scene in the animated Killing Joke movie, felt like it didn't add anything at all to how Nightwing and Harley interacted for the rest of the movie. And there was a long, long chase scene where Harley, Nightwing and Batman chased down a random dude who... happens to end up being Harley's old prom date or some shit, and my reaction is identical to Batman's at the end of the scene: "what the hell, man?" The post-credit scene, an extended sequence of Harley being like a weird reality show host, also fell absolutely flat. I'm not opposed to fun scenes, and I clearly had fun watching the movie, but it's far from being a masterpiece.

There are some scenes that are comedy gold, mind you, like Batman tapping his fingers to the tune of Harley's song, or Batman drinking milk, or Nightwing using sign language to tell Batman not to take the loser reinforcements that Booster Gold is offering. Faux-serious Batman is the best Batman.

The sexuality is honestly way too much that it becomes distracting, I think. Batman: TAS has always had a risque undertone without being too overt about it (obviously, considering it's a kid's show). And I'm no moral guardian -- I'm not opposed to a bit of fun sexual jokes every now and then. But the movie inserted way too much of them that there really isn't much point to a huge portion of it.

It actually does its action scenes and dramatic scenes pretty well. Harley's earnest ranting to Nightwing about how she doesn't have a place in this world and is forced to debase herself to become a waitress at a stripperiffic-superhero-themed bar is extremely well done. Harley's reactions to the kidnapped doctor's death is also a great scene, and action-wise, the initial Nightwing versus Harley melee in the alley is an amazingly animated scene.

The story isn't terribly bad, to be honest, although there's nothing particularly special either. Harley's retired, but her good buddy Poison Ivy has fallen in with a bad crowd, specifically the giant plant-man Floronic Man, and the two of them team up to turn the world into nothing but plants, and Batman and Nightwnig has to recruit Harley's help to hunt down Poison Ivy. There's a bit of a B-plot about the Swamp Thing and the Green which I'm just going to flat-out say is absolutely incomprehensible if you're not already familiar with Swamp Thing lore, especially when Swamp Thing randomly pops up at the end of the movie... to do absolutely nothing. It is sort of hilarious, I think, and at least they didn't end the movie with a deus ex machina.

They did end it quite abruptly, though -- Harley manages to talk Poison Ivy down (or, well, use her puppy-dog-eyes to do so), and Floronic Man is about to fuck everyone up. Swamp Thing shows up but after an epic speech ends up sinking back into the swamp. Harley just goes 'let's torch the dude with a match!' Credits roll. In a mid-credits scene Floronic Man runs around the swamp, having been set on fire, screaming. It's not un-hilarious, but honestly I didn't think the gag was funny enough to justify ending the movie like that. There's a significant lack of balance between the comedic moments of the movie and the main driving plot, and it's frustrating that a lot of the buildup behind Harley Quinn's more dramatic beats -- like finding a place in the world and trying to 'do good' doesn't actually come to a satisfying conclusion by the end of the movie.

The movie isn't bad by any stretch, but it certainly is flawed, and I'm not sure how much of my liking of the movie isn't actually based on flat nostalgia for seeing these characters and designs.

DC Easter Eggs Comics:

• The bar is just full of easter eggs, becasue it's filled with minor characters and thugs from Batman: TAS, including, among others, Two-Face's twin mooks doing a long singing act (which IIRC actually died in the cartoon), Rhino (Ventriloquist's recurring henchman), Farmer Brown's daughter, and a whole lot of others. I'm too lazy to list them all. The tiger-stripe mooks that mock Batman initially are,  I think, based on Catwoman's goons from the 60's TV show instead.
• In the bar, Batman drinks a glass of milk. That, as well as the visible onomatopoeia during the fight scene that proceeded in the bar, are both references to the 60's show.
• Harley Quinn's waitress costume is basically a variant of her New 52 costume, including the red-black hair.
• The waitresses dressed in scanty versions of superhero costumes include those based on Batgirl, Catwoman, Power Girl, Fire, Ice, Starfire and Vixen, among others.
• Poison Ivy and Floronic Man (or, well, his human alter-ego Jason Woodrue) actually worked together in the live-action Batman and Robin. Well, briefly, before Jason tried to kill Pamela and cause her transformation into Poison Ivy, whicch earned a quick death shortly afterwards.