Movie Review: Batman vs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2019)
Synopsis: Gotham City is facing a new villainous threat, Shredder and his Foot Clan have teamed with Ra's al Ghul and the League of Assassins to turn all Gotham's residents into mutants. As Batman attempts to save the day, he finds himself teaming with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. However, their alliance is threatened when the turtles prove to be too undisciplined for Batman.
Who's in it? The animated movie uses voices from Troy Baker, Eric Bauza, Tom Kenny, Tara Strong and John DiMaggio.
Review: I was flipping through channels this morning, looking for something to watch (or at least provide some background noise) while I had breakfast and came across Batman vs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. While I rolled my eyes at first, I was also admittedly intrigued and decided to watch it.
It was about what I expected, and I mean that both in a good and bad way.
I'll start out by saying the plot of the movie was surprisingly good. The team-up between Shredder (Andrew Kishino) and Ra's al Ghul (Cas Anvar) was an intriguing one, both because they had their own motivations (Ghul wanted revenge on Batman and Gotham while Shredder wanted immortality) and brought their own armies with them. It was both an alliance that could be formidable but also could see a clash between the two villains.
I am also going to include a word of warning - this might be an animated movie but I'm not so certain it's a kids' movie because there is quite a bit of violence, including a large number of on-screen deaths. It's definitely not what I was expecting from a movie based on two cartoon series that usually avoid that sort of thing (especially the Turtles). I'm not saying it was necessarily bad, just more adult (or older kid) than expected.
One of my problems with the film is it tended to get off track at times, mostly because it was determined to include as many Batman characters as it could. For a while, it even seemed as though the writers forgot about the two main villains because there was an awful lot of time spent on the Joker (Baker) and his own army of well-known Batman villains, especially after they all voluntarily allowed themselves to be mutated into monsters (something my wife and I both thought was more ridiculous than anything else).
My bigger complaint, however, is the movie does seem to diminish the Turtles more than would be expected. They get their butts kicked (despite having a 4-to-1 advantage) by Batman (Baker), and even Robin (Ben Giroux) gave them a run for their money. I would expect a movie like this to at least attempt to put them on reasonably equal footing when it came to fighting skills rather than focus more on their comedy.
I had mixed opinions about the ending. I thought the final boss fight was reasonably good, especially with the way Batman and Leonardo (Bauza) fought each other's nemesis but wasn't a fan of the way the movie attempts to make Batman/Bruce Wayne more turtle-like at the end. It was just too out of character for him.
Final Opinion: It's a cartoon with a unique hero pairing and that did make it reasonably entertaining to watch. However, I think it could have been quite a bit better had there not been so much of a fighting deficit between the Turtles and Batman and there would have been more focus on the main plot.
My Grade: C+
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Here are some reviews of other animated movies:
Movie Review: The Bad Guys (2022)
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