BlandMan; Batman: Under the Red Hood Review

Since the 90's it's usually a guarantee that the animated Batman properties would be good. Since the animated series a lot has gone into crafting quality stories with top notch animation and grade A voice acting. "Under the Red Hood" is a movie clearly made in a post "Dark Knight" world, but unfortunately it can't decide if it wants to be like the Christopher Nolan Batman or the animated series version and the end result is an overall bland affair.

The story revolves around Batman taking on The Red Hood a new vigilante who isn't afraid to use extreme measures to fight crime a.k.a. murder. The story starts at the pivotal scene in "A Death in the Family" where the second Robin, Jason Todd, is murdered by the Joker. The rest of the film is based on "Under the Hood" a story about the Red Hood and the possibility that it is Jason Todd.

There are really three main characters in the film. Batman, the Red Hood, and the Black Mask (A villain anybody not familiar with the comics wont be aware of) and the film revolves around both Black Mask and Batman attempting to put an end to the Red Hood's vigilantism. The Joker is in the movie, not that much, but he is pretty important to the film.

Action is the best thing about the film. The fight scenes are frantic and action packed, and because it's a PG-13 movie it can get fairly violent for an animated movie. The character design is alright, it's a little too generic for a cartoon. This is where it becomes apparent that they are trying to emulate the Nolan style of Batman. While the action is over the top and crazy, the way the characters look and talk are way too low key for this type of movie.

This is the one big weak spot of the film for me, the voice acting. Batman's actor, Bruce(weird) Greenwood, is ok, it's almost close enough to the animated series actor that it passes. Nightwing, the first Robin, is done well by Neal Patrick Harris, but he's in the film for a total of about 15 minutes. The one real bummer of an actor is John DiMaggio (Bender from Futurama) as Joker, he plays this character way to timidly.

The whole portrayal of the Joker in this film is way to subtle, he just doesn't have that psychotic nature he has in other work. This is how most of the film feels, too subtle. It tries to hard to be the new type of Batman instead of it's own thing. If you're gonna do animated Batman go all the way, not this weird, trying to be real stuff, leave that to the movies with real people.

The movie doesn't really work well until the last 10 to 15 minutes.If you like Batman at least check it out, it's not great but it's something. If this impresses you definitely check out the 90's animated show, that's some compelling Batman. As for this, well it's not quite compelling, just some nice animation to look at. Eh, 2.5 outta 5