5 sentence review of Batman: Year One DVD

by General Tso

5. The adaptation of the Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli classic “Batman: Year One” storyline is an ambitious and tricky undertaking for a direct-to-video animated film that runs a bit over an hour.

4. “Year One” is one of the best Batman stories ever told and a part of the modern comics cannon as much as “Watchmen” and Miller’s other great Batman opus “The Dark Knight Returns.”

3. All that means is fans have high expectations for any effort to recreate the work and the Warner Brothers Animation offering simply does not live up to the enormity of the task.

2. The work feels perfunctory and flat, the animation feels lazy, stilted and silly (a climatic scene with Bruce Wayne running isn’t even Hanna-Barbera good) and art perspectives so poorly chosen that a dramatic scene of a bat flying through Wayne Manor’s window to inspire a wounded Bruce is essentially ruined by poor camera angles.

1. Newcomers to the “Year One” story, especially children weened on “Batman: The Animated Series” and “Justice League” cartoons, may well be pleased, but it’s just another Batman cartoon and that is a shame because “Year One” is far from just another Batman story.

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