Monday at the Movies - March 5, 2018

Welcome to another installment of “Monday at the Movies.” And since it’s Monday, it must be time to review something from the animated realm.

Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2018) – This film ended up being, to quote a popular Star Wars meme, “a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.” The Scooby Gang, alias Mystery Incorporated, comes to Gotham City, where they find themselves invited by Batman (Diedrich Bader) to join the Mystery Analysts of Gotham, a clubhouse of super sleuths (including Black Canary, Detective Chimp, Martian Manhunter, Plastic Man, The Question, and the aspirant Aquaman) who find themselves wrapped up in one of Batman’s earliest – and only unsolved – cases, which just so happens to involve a ghost. I was a big fan of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, a first-rate animated series that embraced everything in Batman’s long history, from the nutty and the zany to the grim and the gritty; I’ve also been a monthly reader of Scooby-Doo Team-Up!, the comic that pairs the Scooby Gang with guest stars from the DC publishing wheelhouse. This film, then, seemed like a natural extension of two things I already like, and so I’m pleased to report it’s great fun. It strikes a balance between the pseudo-supernatural sleuthing of the Scooby-Doo universe and the high concept superheroics that put Batman next to a talking chimp to solve crimes, managing quite well to strike a balance between two distinct brands. This is a crossover done right, with plenty of fan service and a decent story in its own right. Moreover, the film actually includes a well-crafted mystery (with at least one “red” herring), with sufficient clues for the audience to piece together. I’d happily watch more installments of the Mystery Analysts, particularly if they give us an opportunity to revisit Diedrich Bader’s Batman, a collegial and dead(pan) serious Bat who captures that surrogate father quality of Batman comics from the 1950s and who can render immortal a line like “The hammer of justice is unisex.” (Points also to Jeffrey Combs, who returns as the definitive Question, and John DiMaggio, whose Aquaman is as delightfully ‘outrageous!’ as ever.)

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!

Monday at the Movies - January 27, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.” Everyone else is talking about Target’s “stealth release” of a new Justice League movie, so why not us too?

JLA Adventures: Trapped in Time (2014) – This film is a bit of a strange beast, but it’s ultimately not an unsuccessful outing for DC’s premiere superhero team-up.  The plot finds Lex Luthor awakened in the 30th century after a world-conquest scheme goes awry; with the power over time itself, Luthor sends his Legion of Doom to prevent Superman from being raised on Earth.  While Trapped in Time mostly features a New 52-era Justice League – including Aquaman and Cyborg in positions of prominence – it also includes two Legion of Super-Heroes applicants, Dawnstar and Karate Kid.  Surprisingly, though the Justice League mostly takes a backseat to these two, the film still works as an engaging team story, enjoyable for those of us who love these characters almost as much as people we actually know.  Newcomers, though, probably won’t find much to appreciate here, and indeed Trapped in Time isn’t the best animated feature with these characters (offhand, I’d give that honor to Justice League: The New Frontier).  But what’s refreshing is that Trapped in Time doesn’t take itself too seriously.  In fact, the best scene in the film finds the Justice League and the Legion of Doom playing football with baby Superman, a hilarious bit of physical comedy that actually gets funnier.  It’s the kind of absurdly lighthearted play with the material that you won’t find in the uber-reverent DCAU series, which usually takes the cake in terms of quality adaptation.  Kudos to Diedrich Bader for returning to the role of Batman after his Brave and the Bold cartoon ended; he’s the most prominent in the voice cast that does its work well without exceptionally distinguishing itself.  The cliffhanger suggests there might be more to come from this production house, and I say bring it on.  Trapped in Time is reliable and entertaining without the burden of past success; looks like a fun future from here.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  We’ll see you here next week!

Monday at the Movies - September 23, 2013

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.”  I’ve been doing an annotated bibliography on the novel and awaiting details about the third entry in the trilogy of adaptations, so this week we present a review that really ought to have gone up on September 2.

Atlas Shrugged: Part II (2012) – I’m on record as being an admirer of Ayn Rand’s magnum opus, an 1100-page treatise on railroads and free-market capitalism.  And I even liked the first film adaptation, marred by a low budget and poor marketing though it undeniably was.  With a full cast overhaul for Part II, I wasn’t optimistic, but perhaps as a result I ended up enjoying this one more than I expected.  Make no mistake, though; this isn’t a full movie but rather quite clearly a middle entry in a six-hour three-part narrative, so don’t come in looking for a one-and-done.  As heroic Dagny Taggart, one of the last holdouts in a crumbling dystopia, Samantha Mathis is capable, though she lacks that snarky edge that Taylor Schilling brought to the role in Part I.  Similarly, Jason Beghe’s Hank Rearden is gruffer and more of a heavy than Grant Bowler in the first (who I contend was perfect casting).  But as Francisco d’Anconia, Esai Morales is head over heels a better choice than Jsu Garcia, giving the role all the mystique and theatricality it deserves; d’Anconia is essentially Rand’s Bruce Wayne, and Morales plays the character’s apparent contradictions to the hilt.  (But remember, “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises.”)  These movies have been hampered by low budgets, though the inclusion of more character actors from TV (like Ray Wise, Paul McCrane, and Diedrich Bader) has given us some great casting for Part II.  While these films likely only hold the attention of the converted, let’s hope Part III ends on the high note the novel deserves.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!