Video Librarian Reviews
The success of the 2016 DC animated film Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, featuring Adam West and Burt Ward (stars of the campy original 1960s TV series Batman) as the voices of Batman and Robin, and Julie Newmar reprising her purr as Catwoman, inspired this sequel made with the same mix of tongue-in-cheek humor, tortured puns, and crazy supervillain schemes delivered with straight-faced self-awareness. William Shatner voices the twin roles of District Attorney Harvey Dent, an egotistical but well-meaning public servant, and the villain Two-Face, created by a scientific experiment gone wrong. The character never appeared in the original series so his origin is sketched out in the opening minutes and the colorful credits sequence. There's not much to the story, a silly little lark that tosses in classic TV villains King Tut and The Bookworm, with bit roles for Joker, Riddler, and Penguin, but the filmmakers love the original show and honor it with tributes, including voice actors recreating the voices of classic villains, and Robin pounding his fist into his open hand to punctuate his verbal exclamations. Featuring the final screen performance of West, who passed away in June 2017, this is a strong optional purchase. (S. Axmaker) Copyright Video Librarian Reviews 2018.