Sam Liu, “Batman and Harley Quinn” (2017)
Teaming Batman and Nightwing together with The Joker’s on-off girlfriend Harley Quinn might have seemed a good idea at the time it was first proposed but the result is just dreadful. A thin story is stretched even thinner with an unnecessary middle section referencing the old campy 1960s television series, too much biffo, inadequate plotting and superficial characterisation that would justify having the quirky and talkative super-villain join the Dynamic Duo in their search for the equally Terrifying Twosome of Poison Ivy and Jason Woodrue. Throw in deliberately crude animation, an unsatisfactory resolution featuring a deus ex machina device, and a very shallow theme about how best to preserve Earth’s flora and fauna against human greed and destruction, and what emerges is a mess that doesn’t quite know which audience to target so it targets everyone – teens, pre-teens, adults – alike.
Arch-villains Poison Ivy and Jason Woodrue, sometimes also known as Floronic Man, band together to kidnap botanist Dr Harold Goldbloom and force him to recreate the formula (stolen from a lab) that turned a scientist into a giant human-plant hybrid known as Swamp Thing. On hearing of Poison Ivy teaming with Woodrue, Batman and Nightwing search for Harley Quinn, recently released from prison, to persuade her to lead them both to Poison Ivy’s whereabouts. After agreeing rather reluctantly – and not without putting up a fight – Harley Quinn piles into the Batmobile with the superheroes and what then follows is an excruciating trip out of Gotham City into the countryside with Quinn blabbing and bleating and pulling off toilet gags while Batman tries to drive and Nightwing tries to navigate. At one point the three pile into a club and stay there too long (wasting viewers’ patience) before the crooks who run the joint finally recognise them and try to stop Batman and Nightwing from leaving without paying – in blood. After trashing the place, the trio continue their way. An encounter with Poison Ivy and Woodrue results in similar mayhem with Dr Goldbloom caught in the crossfire, and the chase starts up again with the Dynamic Duo and Quinn hot on the heels of the super-villains as the latter try to rendezvous with Swamp Thing down in the backwater bayous of Louisiana.
Voiced by Melissa Rauch, Harley Quinn is more screechy and ragged than bratty and brilliant as the former psychiatrist turned criminal. Kevin Conroy maintains a stoic and taciturn Batman who remains the same cardboard cut-out enigma at the end as he was at the beginning. The potential of Nightwing and Harley Quinn actually being chums trading smart witticisms exists but remains dormant. Poison Ivy and Jason Woodrue are little more than eco-terrorist extremists; in any case the film spends little time delineating their characters and why they should want to work together in the first place.
The film adds very little to the Batman universe and only the most diehard fans who live and breathe everything Gothamesque and who cannot imagine a world without the Dark Knight should see it. Pruned of its unnecessary baggage, the film would have been a manageable 30-minute cartoon.