Today’s quick review: Batman and Harley Quinn. When supervillains Poison Ivy (Paget Brewster) and Jason Woodrue (Kevin Michael Richardson) steal the information needed to engineer a virus capable of turning all life on Earth into plants, Batman (Kevin Conroy) and Nightwing (Loren Lester) recruit the help of Harley Quinn (Melissa Rauch), a reformed supervillain and a friend of Ivy’s, to track the villains down and put a stop to their plan.
Batman and Harley Quinn is an animated superhero movie loosely tied to Batman: The Animated Series. Batman and Harley Quinn offers exactly what the title implies, a team-up between DC’s most straight-laced hero and one of its most offbeat villains. The overall execution is decent but unexceptional, with good voice acting and dialogue, a modest amount of action, and a token plot that hits the same beats as a typical cartoon episode.
Batman and Harley Quinn’s best feature is its sense of humor. The movie pokes fun at everything from the 60s Batman show to the Harley fandom to the Justice League. The dialogue is snappy, irreverent, and surprisingly clever, and Batman, Nightwing, and Harley make for an entertaining lead trio. However, the movie’s mature themes and innuendo can be jarring at times, depending on the viewer’s tastes and expectations.
Watch Batman and Harley Quinn if you are a superhero fan looking for a fun way to spend an hour. The sharp dialogue is enough to make the movie enjoyable, but neither the plot nor the action are enough to set it apart from DC’s other animated offerings. As such, Batman and Harley Quinn’s main appeal is to fans of Harley looking for their fix of the character.
6.8 out of 10 on IMDB. I give it a 6.5 to 7.0 for amusing writing and decent production quality held back by an odd tone and a mediocre plot.