The Conservative Cave
The Bar => The Lounge => Topic started by: movie buff on December 07, 2011, 09:39:23 PM
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Hi again, and welcome back to my 25 Days of Christmas!
For this installment, continuing the set dealing with Christmas specials to well- known animated TV shows, I shall be looking at two Christmas specials from one of the best shows of my childhood, “Batman: The Animated Series.†This was such an amazing series, dark, brilliantly written, and at times funny, with wonderful portrayals of all the familiar and not so familiar Batman characters. It’s actually had not one but two Christmas specials, both of which were quite good.
The first (And my favorite of the two) is called simply “Christmas with the Joker.†It of course takes place on Christmas Eve, and it opens with the Joker (Voice of Mark Hamill, easily my all- time favorite Joker actor) escaping from Arkham Asylum, and in a pretty darn funny and creative way to boot.
We then cut to Batman/ Bruce Wayne (Voice of Kevin Conroy) and Robin/ Dick Grayson. Batman clearly doesn’t care much for Christmas and has very little interest in celebrating it (Especially with him knowing that the Joker’s on the loose), but Robin, trying to bring out the Christmas spirit in him, convinces him to cut their evening patrol of the city short, and come home to watch ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ on TV, which Bruce has apparently never seen before (As he puts it, “I could never get past the titleâ€).
However, when they sit down and turn on the TV, they find that Joker has taken over a TV station and interrupted the broadcast to show his own Christmas special, ‘Christmas with the Joker.’ As you can probably guess, he has some nasty yuletide surprises up his sleeve for Gotham City that he points out in his show. First, he reveals that he has kidnapped three people (Batman’s old buddy Commissioner Gordon, oafish police detective Harvey Bullock, and news reporter Summer Gleeson, or as Joker refers to the three of them, “The Awful Lawful Familyâ€) and is holding them hostage at wherever he’s hiding out, and gives Batman until midnight to rescue them.
In the meantime, he also arranges all kinds of major- league threats in Gotham City and elsewhere to kill or at least distract the Dynamic Duo (i.e. dynamiting a railroad bridge when a train is coming close, having a large cannon open fire on Gotham). Batman stops all of these, and it leads to a funny- as- hell confrontation with Joker at his hideout. When he’s recaptured, Batman and Robin are free to return home and watch the movie (Which Bruce enjoyed more than he thought he would), and have a nice Christmas.
There are a couple problems I have with this episode. First, the animation is rather poor considering what good animation the series normally has, some of the characters look too sloppy. Second, during a scene when Batman and Robin fight off a bunch of killer toy planes the Joker unleashes on them, Robin gives a pun that’s so unspeakably lame I won’t mention it here.
Though, there’s still a lot to like about ‘Christmas with the Joker.’ First and foremost, it is easily one of the funniest episodes in the series, mainly for what the Joker does, as this is him at his most madcap insane. Between yukking it up with a hand- puppet named Laffy early in the episode, and giving Batman a very special Christmas present in the episode’s climax, he had me laughing all the way. I bet Mark Hamill had a lot of fun recording Joker’s lines for this episode. Also, Robin has a kind of cool and insightful line early on in the episode when, trying to convince Batman to watch ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ he points out that, “It’s about one man and the positive impact he has on a city. Sound familiar?â€
‘Christmas With the Joker’ makes for a great Christmas special, and great general episode for such an awesome series. It’s on Youtube I think, by all means check it out.
The other animated Batman Christmas special is called ‘Holiday Knights.’ This was aired later in the series, when it was known as ‘The New Batman Adventures,’ and all the character designs looked different from the way they used to, though I believe the actors and writers all stayed the same. This is a set of three short holiday- related stories in Gotham City. The first story concerns Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy on December 22. Harley’s depressed because they’re stuck in a rathole apartment, and aren’t doing anything Christmas- related. Ivy won’t even let Harley get them a Christmas tree. However, Ivy gets the idea to meet Bruce Wayne at a social event and hypnotize him using a kiss with her mind- control lipstick. It turns Bruce into their unwilling yet helpless puppet, so they use him and his credit cards to go on a mall shopping spree that would put Paris Hilton to shame. As you can guess, when the lipstick’s effect wears off, Bruce/ Batman is pretty pissed off at the gals, leading to a chase/ showdown at a toy store and Harley getting her Christmas wish.
The second story takes place on Christmas Eve. It centers around Detective Harvey Bullock and his partner Renee Montoya, who are doing a stakeout at a department store to try and stop a rash of shoplifting which had been occurring at the store. The two officers are there undercover as the department store Santa and an elf. This leads to a scene which is simultaneously funny, awkward, and moving all at once as one of the kids who sits on Bullock/ Santa’s lap is the daughter of a man Bullock had apparently arrested earlier, whose only wish is to see her daddy on Christmas. The cops soon discover the mastermind behind the shoplifting ring is Batman’s bizarre enemy Clayface, and Batgirl (Who had been there in her civilian garb to buy a gift for her father) shows up to stop him.
The final story skips ahead to New Year’s Eve. Joker has begun killing certain people, and plans to steal a special sonic- bomb weapon to wipe out countless civilians at Gotham Square at midnight. Batman and Robin show up to stop him, yet that proves harder than they thought. Still, they manage to stop Joker’s plot and save the city, and the episode ends with Batman and Commissioner Gordon enjoying what is apparently a New Year’s tradition for them; Meeting for coffee at a small Gotham diner to celebrate having survived another year.
This special is not as good as ‘Christmas With the Joker,’ but it’s still good. The Harley and Ivy story is good and funny, especially for the montage of the gals’ shopping spree with Bruce unwillingly taking the bills (Although he can’t stop himself due to the lipstick’s effects, you can see the rage on his face as he signs one credit card receipt after another). The shoplifting story is alright, the beginning with Bullock as a department store Santa is funny, and the aforementioned scene with the criminal’s daughter works out very well, but the showdown with Clayface wasn’t all that impressive, especially compared to some of the more epic showdowns with him in other episodes. The New Year’s story is funny for a lot of Joker’s lines, and the faceoff with him and his thugs to save the city is quite exciting. The ending at the diner worked well at developing Batman and Gordon’s characters, as you can see how relieved they are just to have survived another year in a city as deranged as Gotham, yet still able to relax over coffee in a quiet diner. It’s certainly worth a watch.
And so, those are the Batman animated Christmas specials. Come back tomorrow for another review, that’ll conclude the set on cartoon series’ Halloween specials!
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Oops, pretty stupid typo in the last sentence. I meant to say "Come back tomorrow for another review that'll conclude the set on cartoon series' Christmas specials!" My bad.
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I hope you're going to include this gem in your Chrismas movie reviews....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbF_ecnlyTk
BTW, I do know how to post YouTube vids. I felt it would be a much better surprise if I did it this way instead....enjoy. O-)