Plot summary: When Poison Ivy and The Floronic Man partner up to hatch a plan that threatens the entire human race, Batman has no choice but to team with Harley Quinn.
[I did actually review this for The Reel World separately to The Matt Signal project but I don’t think it’s very well written so I’m doing it over.]
Is It Canon?
Bruce Timm certainly intended for it to be, but by his own admission he doesn’t really give much of a fuck about that kind of thing.
There are only very minor things that break the canon, such as dead henchmen being alive again, but that would happen in the various shows anyway. The biggest ‘front and centre’ thing is if it messes with the flashback sequence from Return of the Joker. Notice I said ‘if’ though, so… god… I think this fucking thing might be canon.
Notes and Trivia
Original Release Date: August 14th, 2017
Directed: Sam Liu
Written: Bruce Timm (story & screenplay) and Jim Krieg (screenplay)
Animation: DR Movie Co., LTD.
Music: Michael McCuistion, Lolita Ritmanis and Kristopher Carter
You may think the plot of this film seems familiar. That’s officially because both it and ‘Harlequinade‘ were inspired by 48 Hours. Realistically though this is a much worse version of that episode.
The film received two tie-in comic series from Ty Templeton and Rick Burchett, who were responsible for a huge amount of the DCAU tie-in comics for decades.
Floronic Man aka Jason Woodrue is a character more people have seen than realise it, as he appears in Batman & Robin, played by John Glover (aka The Riddler in BTAS), being the one responsible for Ivy’s transformation as well as the creation of Bane in the movie. Kevin Durand played an interesting version of him in the ill-fated Swamp Thing series.
The majority of the art style takes after TNBA but there are a few original BTAS elements, such as the Batmobile design.
The patrons of the bar include a number of niche BTAS pulls such as Captain Clown, Randa Duane, Ubu, EmmyLou Brown, Candice (Rupert Thorne’s ummm associate), Maven (Catwoman’s ummm assistant), and various henchmen of Joker, Two-Face, Hugo Strange, Scarface, Penguin and Mr. Freeze. There are also some Batman 66 henchmen in the bar, with the scene in general paying several small tributes to the series, perhaps due to Adam West passing away earlier in the year.
Recap
Poison Ivy and The Floronic Man break into STAR Labs and steal research data about Alec Holland aka Swamp Thing, aiming to turn the world into plant-hybrids.
Seeking info on Ivy, Batman and Nightwing ‘recruit’ Harley Quinn who has struggled to live a normal life since her last stint in Arkham.
After some hijinks she finds the location of the plantlike pair’s hideout, but the villains escape. A dying hostage reveals they’re heading for the swamp that transformed Holland.
Harley appeals to Ivy emotionally, but Floronic Man fights on. Swamp Thing appears… but refuses to intervene. So Harley just suggests using a match. The End!
Best Performance
So the late great Arleen Sorkin had retired from voice acting when the film was made, with Tara Strong playing Harley in most things instead and doing a relatively solid job. Apparently they felt they needed some star power instead so recruited Melissa Rauch of The Big Bang Theory to fill the titular role. I have no clue if there was any direct connection between this and Kelly Cuoco being cast as the leader of the Harley Quinn series, but I think Cuoco does a better job. The reason for that is she is skewing closer to her natural manner of speaking so can give a more authentic performance. Conversely Melissa Rauch isn’t necessary bad per se, it’s just a very try-hard performance. At least half of it is the awful dialogue, but she’s also forcing things at times. I admire her bravery to attempt singing Debbie Harry while putting on a voice but it’s uhh… not quite there.
I certainly see the vision for Paget Brewster as Poison Ivy. I’d like to hear her get another crack at it with better material but that ship has almost certainly sailed. But hey, people expect the character to turn up in Caped Crusader Season 2, so who knows? Kevin Michael Richardson is almost always solid but is rarely asked to do more than his autopilot deep-voiced villain work here.
While his work was generally mixed 20 years prior and hasn’t gotten any better from the time off, it genuinely was nice to hear Loren Lester voice Dick Grayson again.
Luckily Kevin Conroy is as delightful as ever, slipping seamlessly back into his most iconic role and doing his very best to carry the damn movie in the face of maybe the worst dialogue he was ever asked to do. He’s stern, he’s cool, he’s got some dry humour in places. He was the man, and I miss him all the time.
Review
Welcome back to the wild speculation zone, folks! I think Bruce Timm not bringing in Paul Dini to co-write this film is one of the most damning pieces of evidence for people like me who believe they had a professional falling out at some stage. Timm obviously insists he co-created Harley but if we’re all being for real for real, Paul Dini is the leading authority on the character. I’ve heard the rational that Dini wasn’t an employee of Warner Bros. by this point so Timm tapped Jim Krieg, who was, instead of bringing in an outsider. I call bullshit on that because it’s not like WB would say no. I think this movie was Timm trying to prove he deserves equal credit for an extremely popular character by doing it without Dini (just as I think he’s spent the last decade trying to prove he deserves more credit for BTAS than he gets)… and the results speak for themselves.
Bruce Timm’s desire to make things ‘raunchier’ is made clear from the off as Sarge Steel expresses his desire to bang Lady Shiva and Batman extorts him using knowledge that he sees a dominatrix. These are among the better jokes of this ilk in the film which says everything about what you’re in for the rest of the way. From the DC-themed Hooters-style diner that lets Timm draw sluttier versions of fan favourites, to Harley stripping off in front of a tied-up Nightwing and then fucking him, to Harley repeatedly farting in the Batmobile to troll the Dynamic Duo, to copious shaking of tits and ass in the karaoke bar and “Oh, my balls!” in Batman ‘66 style, it just never ends and none of it is funny.
Now I don’t necessarily object to a juvenile tone for Batman… IF it is a sincere attempt to appeal to kids like the recent Bat Fam cartoon. This isn’t that at all. This is written by middle aged men who never grew up. That’s not an audience anyone should be courting. It’s too ‘adult’ for kids, it’s too immature for grown ups. There are back to back musical numbers in the middle, one an old timey swing-style duet, the other a cover of ‘Hanging On the Telephone’ by Blondie. The cross-section of people who like both of those things and want fart jokes and extended close-up of butts in a Batman animated film cannot be very large.
I note that for all the ‘edgy’ material there’s less queer energy than in BTAS. There would have been ZERO studio pushback in 2017 to them finally acknowledging Harley and Ivy’s romance, but the closest they get is Harley making herself cry to convince Ivy to give up on her evil plan. She sobs and they hold each other with the slightest edge of getting ‘caught in the act’ when Floronic Man sees them, but that’s a cowardly concession in my opinion. These are two of the most prominent queer characters in all of comics and those origins come from this continuity, so they had an obligation to finally rubber stamp it in a film where Harley is the co-lead if you ask me.
The ending has always bothered me too. For one thing, while I can better appreciate the distinction between Swamp Thing and Floronic Man compared to my first viewing, I do still thing it was a little risky to include such similar characters in the film. Even accepting that risk, using Swamp Thing as both essential to the plot – as the villains wish to replicate Holland’s research for their own ends – and to do a gag about him being a (literally) huge anticlimax isn’t my favourite choice either. From there, you’ve got Harley suggesting they forget all the fancy gadgets and just set the fucker on fire with a match, which Bruce and Dick respond to by smiling, lighting one up and giving her simultaneous smooches on each cheek before a Looney Toons style tunnel pull-in and the end credits, so they don’t even show them enacting the plan. There is a brief shot of Woodrue running through the woods on fire, but that’s not a satisfying wrap-up.
And on top of all of that, they do a five minute gag at the very end featuring Harley hosting a gameshow ostensibly aiming to provide unaccredited therapy. I’m not against that path for her in principal given she highlighted how difficult it is for her to regain her licence… but the scene fully makes light of mental health by having the entire thing be a humiliation ritual for the patient, made to run a Wipeout style assault course, only for her to be all ‘ah shucks, couldn’t help this loser, but tune in next time!’ I’m unclear if Bruce Timm approves of therapy given how it’s handled in BTAS and Caped Crusader, where he had more collaborators, but this is probably the most individual control he ever had on a Batman project and it’s the most staunchly against, soooo. Plus, Harley asks Batman to help her get a new job in exchange for her assistance and he firmly refuses, stating she should just want to save the world because it’s the right thing to do. That’s fine, but the idea he wouldn’t help her after all – especially given the fact she proves herself a good person many times in the film – feels so profoundly wrong to me. So we get a rushed ending and an overlong gag after the credits. Not. Great.
As for positives? The opening titles are pretty charming, adopting a bit of a 60s style with lots of clever little gags involving plants accompanied by a lovely score. In fact the music is great throughout, particularly the soft porn style jazz in the Harley/Nightwing scene and the zingy chase sequence.
It also looks pretty fantastic. Fans have long clamoured for modern BTAS or even just DCAU and this movie proved the art style still absolutely sings. Obviously most prefer the original aesthetic to TNBA but that’s offset by supporting it all with cleaner animation techniques, just as Justice League Unlimited did a decade earlier.
I’ve read some people say this is harmless fun and everybody needs to lighten up. If you got anything out of the litany of bad jokes then I’m pleased for you, but I think this thing is bad almost across the board. The parts that are good about it almost make it worse, as it’s wearing the skin of a thing a legion of fans adore, complete with a solid soundtrack, but they’re wasting what should be a welcome return of DCAU Batman on what amounts to Bruce Timm trying to do Looney Tunes with sex jokes. A true waste, and made all the more infuriating given it shares so many elements with episodes of the show they already made, and much better!
I loathe this fucking thing and could not recommend anything less.
Rogues Roundup
Harley Quinn (Melissa Rauch)
Obviously she’s not the villain in this film, but this is the segment I’ve historically talked about her (as well as Catwoman who was a hero 80% of the time).
If this were a comic I’d say she’s got no business beating Nightwing in a fight, but they never really established Dick as a supreme fighter in TNBA, and she does win via trickery so whatever.
The notion of Harley struggling to go straight despite her sincere best efforts is of course interesting… but they already did it better in ‘Harley’s Holiday‘. Instead they take a heavy handed approach, with Dick judging her for being a costumed waitress instead of attempting to get back into psychiatry, only for her to produce a stack of rejection letters and offers to do porn. See above, really.
And of course they make sure to show she has a softer side, comforting the dying scientist and forming a ‘bond’ with Nightwing. It’s all fine. Nothing to write home about.
Poison Ivy (Paget Brewster)
She spends a chunk of the film bickering with Floronic Man, adopting a more sympathetic angle that I’d say goes completely against her historical ethos. Basically Jason becomes ‘Ivy Classic’ and Ivy is softened accordingly. It’s one thing for her to not want Harley to die, but Ivy also expresses trepidation about their plan in general, showing some sympathy for humanity.
Worse than any of that, she’s treated as the sidekick in the partnership, with Floronic Man calling the shots and being portrayed as the true antagonist. That feels somewhat insulting to one of their more beloved villains, and I assume it’s born out of not wanting to portray Ivy as legitimately evil, either because of modern reevaluation of her values or her association with Harley, who the film redeems. I actually don’t object to that, but she should be nobody’s assistant.
The Floronic Man (Kevin Michael Richardson)
They certainly impress upon you early and often that he’s a powerhouse, instantly healing from injury and easily murdering guards left and right. He even defeats Batman & Nightwing in a fight while shrugging off a dozen machine guns. He’s then of course undone by a simple match, making him feel like a big joke after all. Whatever.
I already talked about how he gets to inherit the more extremist elements of Poison Ivy’s traditional worldview so I’m hesitant to praise him for being hardline about environmentalism and whatnot if he’s borrowing it from Ivy.
The Matt Signal 
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