[Dr Kain]

The Supergirl Superman looks like he is scowling after being told he can't have any dessert for misbehaving at school.

Batman The Killing Joke - Man, oh man, where do I begin? First off, what the hell Bruce Timm?! This movie should have been the best animated Batman movie since Mask of the Phantasm, and instead, it ends up being an unremarkable, run of the mill mess. The first half is not only an insult to the fans of the franchise, but also to the masterpiece Alan Moore gave us. The characters in the first 30 minutes are pointless and add nothing to the overall plot, but it is how degrading it gets as far as the relationship between Bruce and Barbara goes. It was unnecessary and highlights everything wrong with DC's perception of what people want out of these movies. They have been riding on a thin line of ice ever since Justice League War, and now they broke it. What should have been a celebration has turned into a tragedy. Hell, Barbara's friend at the library serves absolutely no purpose to the story at all and is only there to exposit details we did not need, nor care about. In fact, that is the biggest problem about the first thirty minutes of the movie, we have no reason to care about anything that occurs. That is not what we are watching the movie for, so why put it there? If you don't know who Batgirl is by now, this movie isn't for you.

So that brings me to the actual story, and it is fine, but the excitement has been diminished by this point, so it goes by without the impact it should have had. Mark Hammil does a fantastic job and it was nice to see him get to do a true representation of Joker, something he hasn't been able to do outside of Mask of the Phantasm and the Arkham games. Kevin Conroy is perfectly fine, but this isn't anywhere near his best work. He sounds like he is just going through the motions of Batman as if he is kind of burnt out on the character or something.

The animation was on par with the other movies. The ears on Batman looked a bit off, but there was nothing inherently wrong with it. Sadly though, the music is pretty forgettable, which is a shame because not only did Batman The Animated Series have one of the greatest soundtracks in the history of animation, but even a lot of the other Batman animated movies, such as The Dark Knight Returns, have had tracks that would stick in your head for days. For this movie, I watched it two hours ago and I can't remember a damn thing about the music.

Overall, it saddens me that I am unable to talk about how amazing this movie because I was expecting to gush over it with immense fangasms. The reality is that it is just another DC animated movie that completely missed its mark, which is annoying when these are direct to video movies, there is no reason why something should not be as long or as short as it needs to be. Instead of cramming too much into a 75 minute run time for one movie and then having to needlessly stretch out another to meet that 75 minutes, do what is best for that movie. If one movie only needs to be 50 minutes in length, make it 50 minutes in length and save the budget for the unused 25 minutes for a different movie that could benefit from it. I would say rent this before you spend the money on it to see if it is worth it to you. I personally wouldn't pay more than $10 for the BD. My score for it is a 7/10.