29 Jun Batman: The Long Halloween part 1 Review

dir. Chris Palmer starring Jensen Ackles, Josh Duhamel, and Naya Rivera

BLUF: DC’s animated movies are spread across a wide spectrum, and this one is an unfortunate misfire

DC has been having a rough time with their live-action movies, but their animated movies have been, by and large, pretty incredible ever since 2007’s Superman: Doomsday. Some entries have been remarkably good (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, All-Star Superman, Justice League: The New Frontier), while others have been not-good (Batman: Bad Blood, Batman: The Killing Joke). 

There are a few entries that marked important efforts, being adaptations of important comics. The Dark Knight Returns was awesome, with Peter Weller’s aged Batman one of the best voice performances of the character (that nobody seems to acknowledge…). The Long Halloween was meant to be another pivotal two-part entry, adapting another great Batman stories. So, it’s truly unfortunate that Part 1 is so…bland.

The comic covers roughly a year of time, as a serial killer murders people on major holidays, and Batman works with Commissioner Gordon and pre-accident D.A. Harvey Dent to solve the cases.

The movie, however, simply takes 80+ minutes to introduce a lot of characters we don’t care about, with terrible voice casting, and some really odd editing/pacing choices.

First, the characters: the mystery involves a lot of characters from Gotham’s underworld, and none of them are interesting, nor are they unique enough to be memorable. In fact, most of them are just caricatures of mob bosses and mafia grunts we’ve seen before. No effort whatsoever to make them memorable or interesting. There are a few potentially interesting characters, like Harvey Dent’s wife and brief appearances of some notable members of Batman’s rogue’s gallery (Solomon Grundy deserves more time in the spotlight). But Part 1 seems focused on just brushing by the interesting bits with hints that they will be more prominent in Part 2. Problem is: who wants to watch Part 2 when Part 1 is so…disinterested in its own potential?

Second, the choice of Jensen Ackles as Batman is awful. He is not good as Bruce Wayne or Batman, and the fact that he is instantly recognizable to anyone that has watched Supernatural means that you are constantly thinking that Dean Winchester is cosplaying as Batman. Ackles was great as Dean, but he makes no attempt to alter his voice in any way to play Bruce or Bats. It is fascinating that such a critical role in a potentially incredible movie was so mis-cast.

Lastly, because the graphic novel is so long and intricately constructed, you would think that restricting the animated movie to two 90-minute parts would be very difficult. And yet, Part 1 has a surprisingly lethargic pace for its short runtime. There are a lot of shots that seem to be held a little longer just to pad the runtime; and there are pauses in dialogue that extend just a bit too long. And by the end of the film, it feels like nothing has happened except Batman has utterly failed to make any meaningful progress whatsoever in solving the case; in fact, even the character comments multiple times that he needs to be a better detective…an oddly appropriate recurring theme for a movie that seems to be narratively adrift in general.

There are a couple decent action scenes, and Catwoman is well utilized. There are also some callbacks to the far superior, live-action Dark Knight films (which itself may have actually just had callbacks to TLH comic) that make for fun moments of recognition. But none of this comes close to making the movie enjoyable or engaging.

On the plus side (maybe?), Part 2 comes out in August, so we do not have to wait long for some resolution, assuming the final entry picks up the pace and actually moves forward narratively. But I find it difficult to believe that there is anything Part 2 can do to redeem the time lost watching Part 1…

Pros:

• I mean, it has Batman in it…
• Fun to have brief cameos by some current and future top-tier villains
• Mercifully short

Cons:

• Terrible voice acting
• Slow pacing with negligible narrative progress despite awesome source material
• Bland, repetitive secondary characters

Rating: 2/5
Hard to classify as anything but a completely blown opportunity that probably won’t be redeemed in Part 2

Review by Jim Washburn