With a friend, I ended up watching the recently released Batman & Harley Quinn. I had heard of the complaints about Harley Quinn’s character, but I ignored them and looked at it anyway, since they complain about sexy female characters all the time.
And it was just so much fun to watch.
The plot is really basic: Harley Quinn is freshly released from prison and, unable to get a regular job, is forced to work as a waitress at a sleazy restaurant. Batman and Nightwing come to her to seek her help in defeating Poison Ivy and the Floronic Man from turning everyone in the world into a plant.
Despite the dark scenery, the story dispenses with the dark mood of a typical Batman story in favor of a lighthearted story of heroes and villains. The movie doesn’t make things overly complex or dramatic — Harley aside, the heroes are generally good and the villains are generally bad. Politics doesn’t factor much into the story; even though climate change motivates the villains, none of it comes off as preachy. It’s just a motivation.
I did have a few complaints, though: there’s a fart fart joke a ways into the movie that was just disgusting, and the singing portion, while nice, was unnecessary, especially since the movie was so short. Also, the ending felt a bit weak.
Overall, though, Batman & Harley Quinn is a fine movie with a healthy sense of fun.
