Superman/Batman Public Enemies Review

I watched Superman/Batman Public Enemies this weekend and I was surprised to find that the movie was good. I mean, I wasn’t expecting the movie to be bad, I just didn’t expect it to be as good as it was.

Plot

A meteor made of kryptonite is on a crash course towards earth and President Lex Luthor (ehm bad guy) with his infinite wisdom decides to use his own patented missiles to destroy the space rock of doom instead of asking for help from one of the many superheroes who could have easily punched the meteor out of the sky. Superman and Batman, who think Lex’s plan will fail, decide on their own method of saving the planet and inadvertently bruise Luthor's ego. In retaliation to the egregious offense to his pride, Lex implicates Superman of murder and slaps a $1 billion bounty on the Man of Steel. Superman must then team up with Batman, the only person in the world smart enough to know that Superman isn’t a cold blooded killer, if he wants to survive the constant onslaught of foes looking for a little extra cash and friends wanting to bring him to “justice.”

What the Movie did Right

• Fan Service-They definitely crammed a lot of characters into one movie, but it never felt like the abundance of characters were arbitrarily thrown into the movie just because it need bodies. A lot, but certainly not all, of the cameos got a chance to show off their talents as they battled our two heroes.

• Battle Royal-A lot of animated movies try to focus on telling an interesting story with one or two big action scenes and that’s fine...sometimes, but this is a comic book movie and we (the fans) want action and this movie delivered it. I don’t think five minutes passed without someone getting thrown into a building or being pelted with exploding batarangs.
• Good Writing- So what if the plot, “The world will be destroyed unless you save it,” has been done a million times before, it doesn’t mean the writing can’t be good. The dialogue wasn’t drawn out or sappy and none of the lines seemed forced or cliched so kudos to the voice actors. But what I really liked was that several characters brought jokes and friendly banter with them. I couldn't help, but laugh at random comments about Batman’s dreary personality and Power Girl’s accentuated costume.
• This One’s for the Big Kids-Not to say that this film isn’t kid friendly, but the movie was definitely aiming to please teenagers and up instead of the 5-12 year old crowd that most cartoons these days are targeting. Basically, good job creators for targeting the larger demographic of your audience, I’m sure that will equal bigger sales.

Here’s What the Movie did Wrong (I’m just being nit picky)

• Why so Stiff-The animation was stiff and it looked like all the characters couldn’t move properly because their rippling muscles got in the way.

• Special Features-The special features were not interesting, well on disc one anyways. When the special feature says Green Lantern preview I expect to see a clip of the movie or some really good concept art, but all I got was the director telling me Green Lantern's origin and how perfect the voice actors were for their roles. Now there is a second disc with a slew of extras, but unfortunately Redbox doesn’t let you rent the bonus disc. Sad, I know, but I might add onto the review if I ever see the bonus features.

Final Thoughts

Overall the movie was a good, straight forward action packed flick that should make any DC fan happy. I’m giving Superman/Batman Public Enemies 4 batarangs to the face out of 5

Oh hey, in my preview of this movie which you can check out here, I mentioned that all the characters in the movie were ripped and that everyone must belong to a gym as some kind of world mandate. I’m here to go on the record and say that I was wrong. My new theory is that everyone had liposuction and the doctors didn’t know what to do with all the extra fat so they put it in her.

See that rather large androgynous looking woman with no neck making out with Lex Luthor...it looks like she's sucking out all the fat from lex's body. I bet you can't think of a better way to perform lipo, can you?