Terrible.
1
By Kondeki
The film started out ok, but as it progressed it got worse. To start off, the film is campy af. As in beyond any good levels of campy, so much so that more than half the film is cringeworthy. Especially the henchmen bar scene.
It wasn’t a bad idea to have a bar where all the henchmen hang out, the problem is the showed too much. Harley literally sings an entire song, and the audience has to listen to it - Thank God we have the ability to skip ahead. Why does Harley sing? She did it as a favor to get info Batman and Nightwing need... But why show her singing the whole song?! That’s time in the film that could’ve been better spent, such as improving the ending.
Before we get to that, however, there is an “adult” scene which makes this film not safe for children. So don’t let the TAS art style fool you into thinking you can show this to your kids. Because, you can’t.
Now that’s out of the way, the film is really more fighting than detective work. Batman and Nightwing do a minor amount of that in the film, and it’s really simple stuff too. The other, minor, characters in the film could’ve done this kind of detective work just fine, but the film would have you believe they were too dumb to do so, or maybe incompetent. It’s actually quite insulting. But, it’s fine if the film goes the more action packed route than detective.
Except it’s kind of bad at fight scenes as well. There is little to no intelligence in the fights, despite Batman realizing who he is up against. Fights will essentially boil down to characters pummeling each other. The biggest offense here, is the fight between Ivy and the tree guy (forgot his name). This is where one can see DC starting to introduce more SJW, feminist propaganda. They’ve been introducing this stuff, little by little, presumably because they’re jealous of Marvel’s fame - even though their comic sales are suffering because of the SJW elements they introduced. Not sure of DC’s reasoning there, regardless Ivy wins in the most uneventful, boring, what is essentially a staring contest. The will of the wahmen is strong with this one. But after that, she still loses.
(Spoiler)
The tree guy is about to release the plant virus, when suddenly Swamp Thing shows up to lecture him (and us) about environmentalism.
That’s literally all he does:
Swamp Thing shows up.
Starts lecturing about how humans have damaged the environment.
Says tree guy’s cause is just, somehow.
Admits that tree guy would do more harm than good by releasing the virus.
Swamp Thing does nothing.
Says it’s not his place to judge, after he literally says the virus would kill everything - including “the green.”
Swamp Thing then leaves, having not done jack terrier other than lecture everybody.
Tree guy starts laughing, it seems he thinks he is going to get away with this. All the good guys are despairing at that moment, when Harley tells them how they can defeat tree guy. Batman lights a match, both him and Nightwing kiss Harley on either cheek. Then the film goes black. A CLIFFHANGER ENDING!
Although the films leaves us with the impression that they probably stop tree guy, it never actually shows this happening. There’s also a fart scene with Harley, and they have to pull over the Batmobile. Pretty dumb, but Batman’s comments are also pretty funny. All in all, this is a terrible DC film, and even worse Batman film. I don’t even think Justice League Dark depicts Batman as badly as this, at least he is his naturally terrifying self in that film - despite having the same SJW politics about “the green” too. I would stay away from both films, neither are particularly good. They only redeeming thing about this film is the premise. I like the Ivy and the tree guy are essentially eco-terrorists who don’t have all the facts, but believe the most extreme solution is absolutely necessary. Still not really worth a rent though. I saw it for free, with Prime, and I still feel like it was a waste of my time.
