After years of hemming and hawing, and thinking it couldn't possibly do the source material justice (no pun intended,) I finally took a chance and borrowed one of the library's copies of this movie.
And I'm glad I did, because I think it actually improves on the source material!
By trimming, tweaking, and compressing the graphic novel, we have a story that feels, to me at least, smoother, more focused, and better paced.
I must confess, though...I watched it with subtitles, on the Mute setting.
Sorry, but I just can't get behind the modern style of voice acting in superhero cartoons. By completely stripping away the campy and the hammy aspects (a process which, as I recall, began about 25 years ago,) they went too far to the other extreme, in my humble opinion. Also, I can't stand the way they cast B-, C-, and D-List celebrities in roles that once would have gone to seasoned voice talents. Really, I blame the producers of Batman: TAS, because, even though it was a wonderful series, it set a negative precedent when Clive Revill, a veteran voice actor with a ton of animation credits, was fired from his role as Alfred just because the producers thought it'd be really cool if Efrem Zimbalist played Alfred. Bleh!
But I digress.
Visually, the movie far exceeded my expectations. I loved how the style was so much closer to Cooke's than to the cookie-cutter "Timm-Verse" look, with additional hints of the more outside-the-box styles of 50s and 60s animation. The colors, too, were rich and vivid and quite pleasurable.
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