Batman: Under the Red Hood - 9/10 - Well this was a pleasant surprise. After so many misfires and near-misses, Warner Bros. animation finally turned out a really awesome animated movie. As a fan of Batman: The Animated Series and all its successors, there's a lot to love in this movie. Gotham sports the familiar art deco look; there are giant, impractical police blimps flying everywhere with searchlights; the new Batman is doing a pretty fair Kevin Conroy impression; the new Alfred is doing a pretty good impression of his predecessor; the new Joker is somewhere between Mark Hamill and Heath Ledger (and he
nails Mark Hamill's laughter, which is disconcerting); the writing is pretty solid and puts the focus on non-metahuman characters like the Black Mask and standard gangsters instead of supervillains; the animation is pretty decent (if nothing exceptional); and hell...they even pronounced "Ra's Al Ghul" correctly ("Ray-sh").
This may not be an official part of the DC Animated Universe, but it certainly feels like it could be in it. Make no mistake, though: this movie is dark and violent with some disturbing imagery, although I'd say it's still psychologically less disturbing than Return of the Joker. The thing I really liked about this movie, though, is that it
feels like a movie and not an extended Justice League episode, a trap most of these DC animated movies fall into. I'll definitely be picking up the Blu-Ray on Tuesday, and if you're a Batman fan, I suggest you do so as well.