ANI-MOVIES, *Merry Little Batman

Before they did the Batman: Caped Crusaders series for Amazon Prime, Warner Bros. licensed a brand-new family-friendly take on the Dark Knight in a full-length animated feature that was hand-drawn which is a rarity nowadays. Merry Little Batman was scripted by Regular Show writer Mike Roth and Teen Titans Go writer Morgan Evans, which was also the first animated production put out by Amazon MGM Studios. It's an original story not based on any existing DC Comics material, but it could be seen as a Bizarro version of The Dark Knight Returns where everything in Batman's future is actually pretty good.

Young Damian Wayne is growing up in a Gotham City that has been crime-free for the last eight years. Bruce Wayne has been in semi-retirement for a while and grown a beard but has let his son know his secret identity. Since its Christmas time, Bruce gives his son a child-safe utility belt with first aid equipment. Although Joker hacks the red phone and tricks Batman into checking out something on the other side of the world in a trap set by Mr. Freeze. While the Bat's away, Joker and his senior citizen supervillains of Poison Ivy, Penguin, and Bane begin to plunder Gotham of its Christmas presents. Damien has to get his belt back from Joker who has been leading the Junior Batman around like a carrot on a stick and inadvertently causing massive property damage in his pursuit of the belt. Batman shows back up so father and son can stop Joker from his Grinch routine, and returns all the stolen presents.

Merry Little Batman was successful enough to set up its own upcoming series titled Bat-Family, and received a modicum of positive feedback. The animation is fair with character designs reminiscent of Tim Burton's work, even with most of the cast aged up. The voice actors they had gave a decent enough performance, although Luke Willson really needs to stay out of the superhero comedy routine as he does the most mediocre Batman ever. There's some unusual hip-hop selections for the soundtrack, but the songs are original and work for a Christmas special. The largest drawback for this is that the feature was far longer than it needed to at being well over 90 minutes as it could've been reduced to less than an hour.