Well, I've watched it. It can't be un-watched. Is that good or bad?
What I will say about the film Batman and Harley Quinn is - it's not that bad.
Honestly, I was extremely worried when I read the reviews yesterday but even though it's a movie that you don't *need* to see and you could easily forget it, it's not as soul cripplingly terrible as say...
Oh, I don't know.. Suicide Squad?
I will never stop bashing that useless brain fart of a movie! Never!! Never!!!!
Yeah, that's exactly Harley Quinn's character. Margot definitely killed it at Harley Quinn.
WELL SHE KILLED SOMETHING OF HARLEY QUINN ANYWAY~!!~
*ahem* *wipes off rage spittle and readjusts tie*
This movie has some good and some bad. As we all know, it's pretty much Harlequinade-lite.
The plot is stretched so thin that if it was any longer, who knows how bad it would have gotten.
At least in the original BTAS episode you get an idea of why Harley Quinn was so sorely needed. Batman didn't want to team up but they had tried everything else and needed someone who could get into the Joker's mindset. Here, it felt like two seconds in they were like "welp, better get Harley!" even though they knew Harley had had no contact with Poison Ivy since going under the radar.
It felt like literally no detective work or effort went into trying to solve their case before they aimed their bat-arangs at the cash cow.
I really liked her first appearance though. She seemed to be her original BTAS herself but older and more jaded/cynical.
Nightwing seemed a bit out of character here.. it was like he was goading Harley Quinn back into the villain life then being surprised when she attacks him.
I enjoyed how they made it sound so simple - just get a job with your psychiatry powers! Then she shows him the stack of rejection letters she got from being honest and going straight.
The animation in this is.. kinda odd. The fight scenes and the musical numbers are great, but then sometimes when you see the character standing there or something it just looks.. like they passed the drawing duty onto someone else cheaply and they weren't too familiar with the character. They also use the good old two frames of animation for background and secondary characters dancing which grates my eyeballs. It really was painful to watch. I don't want to shit all over the movie but this sort of stuff you would expect in an early nineties, or even an eighties cartoon where they really had to budget and save costs.
You can't tell me WB/DC have that problem in this decade?
The cheap animation side of it really becomes apparent when you've got dodgy dancing secondary characters for an extended scene but then a lot of good animation is used up showing Harley Quinn chasing down and beating up some jerk for some reason? Like, yeah he seems like a douche but it was ten years ago and he looked pretty sad about it. It didn't add anything to the movie plot.
Kinda like the notorious fart joke. I didn't mind it that much but again.. didn't really bolster the plot.
As well as that, a lot of criticism came from the movie being over sexualised, Harley in particular.
I didn't think it was that bad but it sucks that I'd feel awkward as hell if I ever watched this with my nieces and nephews. That ain't right.
Kinda like this obvious homage, karaoke style. In one, Harley is dancing and singing to save her life as well as distract a hall full of thugs and crooks so Batman can sneak in. She gives a funny, acrobatic and heartfelt performance, while managing to be sexy but in a teasing way.
This performance, while the song itself was pretty enthralling and some parts were animated well.. there's still a huge focus on her butt and boobs shaking. Not to mention she's only doing a solo because it's the only way to get information on Ivy's location. Not like.. I don't know.. Batman doing a Bat-threaten on the hench....shrub.
Batman in da club was about what I expected..
Wait - no it wasn't! What movie was I watching?!
Well ....there were some good Batman and Nightwing moments in the club and for all the microphone innuendo, the twin's duet was fantastic.
Poison Ivy had a perfect voice actress and she looked as good as she did in the original series but I feel like the movie should have had more of an emphasis on her than what it did. I was just a wee tiny sociopath when the cinematic world introduced me to Poison Ivy in Batman and Robin as well as her abusive killer/creator Jason Woodroe.
When I later evolved into my comic reading form, I realised what a parallel Poison Ivy was to Harley Quinn. Both women were doctors who were abused and hurt by the people who helped create their villainous personas. Ivy managed to free herself at the sake of her humanity while Harley had too much humanity and remained stuck in her spiral for several years. I always felt it was the major factor in Ivy taking Harley under her wing.
This movie has her teaming up with him - he's pretty aggressive towards her and even drugs her (yes, the walking poison cocktail manages to be drugged by this leafy douche) yet we don't really get a conclusion to their strange relationship or the reason why they're together at all except a "once you go green you stay together" sort of thing.
Ivy only really fights Floronic Man after seeing Harley cry mock tears. Then the ending... well geez, we don't really see that at all.. it's just sort of implied? You get a two second clip of him setting the entire swamp on fire and that's it. It's played for laughs but it's actually kind of horrifying.
The best way to view this movie in my opinion is as a parody of super hero movies. Dick and fart jokes, pandering T&A, the obvious caricatures of the super soldier guys and the Swamp Jerk. I kind of liked how they pointed out how much omnipresent overpowered morality hyped characters act holier than thou but don't do a darn thing to help anyone. Then there's the obvious campy bat fight throw back.
If you don't think about it too hard you'll probably enjoy it.
Don't forget to watch until the end for your favourite episode of Doctor Quinn, Medicine Person*!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Play nice or play dead! Harley Quinn's rules!