Welcome to The Not-So-New 52, your digital Swampflix comic book (adaptation) newsstand! Starting in 2007, DC Comics and Warner Premiere entered the direct-to-home-video market with animated features, mostly in the form of adaptations of well-received event comics or notable arcs. This Swampflix feature takes its name from the 2011 DC relaunch event “The New 52,” and since there are (roughly) fifty-two of these animated features as of the start of 2024, Boomer is watching them in order from the beginning with weekly reviews of each. So, get out your longboxes and mylar sleeves and get ready for weekly doses of grousing, praise, befuddlement, recommendations, and occasional onomatopoeia as we get animated for over fifteen years of not-so-new comic cartoons. 

I think that I would have had a better impression of Batman and Harley Quinn if I had seen it when it was released, instead of in 2024, when we’ve already had a few seasons of the excellent animated adult Harley Quinn TV show. I’m sure this raucous, foul-mouthed representation of the character—which now seems like a tamer, less funny version of the TV series version—was probably more fun and exciting seven years ago, but it doesn’t hold up anymore. That’s only partially the film’s fault, however; it can’t be held accountable for the fact that what I think of as the best version of Harley Quinn was right around the corner, ready to overshadow it. I can blame it for being, well, not very good. 

In a (contentious and challenged) continuation of the beloved Batman: The Animated Series, Batman (Kevin Conroy) and Nightwing (Loren Lester, reprising) must turn to the recently paroled/released Harley Quinn (Melissa Rauch, taking over for Arleen Sorkin, who originated the role and the character in the 90s) to try and find out where her BFF Poison Ivy (an utterly wasted Paget Brewster) is hiding. Ivy has recently teamed with poor man’s Swamp Thing “Floronic Man” (Kevin Michael Richardson) to steal some actual Swamp Thing matter from STAR Labs, with the goal of doing some “One man’s eco-terrorism is another man’s most ethical way to save the planet” shenanigans. Noting that Harley hasn’t reported to her parole officer in months, Nightwing finds her working at a kind of Super-Hooters where women dress in skimpy(er) versions of superheroine/villainess costumes. Tailing her, the two end up fighting one another; he asks why she’s resorted to this line of work instead of using her psychology doctorate, and she gets real with him about what the job market is like for ex-cons. She knocks him out, he wakes up tied to the bed, and they eventually hook up (although one can read the consensuality of the situation as dubious). She agrees to help the Dynamic Duo, they go on a couple of fest quests, and eventually they find Ivy and her new co-conspirator and save the day. 

Due to time constraints as a result of work, travel, and my social life, I ended up accidentally watching this one as if it were a three-part episode of the series, as the film’s 74-minute runtime breaks down into three neat segments that are roughly the length of an episode of The Animated Series. I don’t think it suffered from that. In fact, I don’t mention it often, but I’ve probably watched about a third of these so far in more than one sitting, a practice I don’t normally condone (a movie is like a spell or most poems, to be consumed all at once or the magic could be dispelled), but which hasn’t really impacted my reading of these as texts. If anything, it’s made me engage with them more. The ones that really capture my interest are straightforward, one sitting, beginning to end viewing experiences, while the ones that fail to really grab me are the ones that I realize I have to rewind and rewatch parts of because my mind was starting to wander. And some, like Gotham Knight and Emerald Knights, are episodic by design, while others are episodic as a result of the fact that they are adapting stories that originated in a serialized, month-to-month medium, like All Star Superman (although that one gets a full viewing every time). Viewed through that lens, this is a three-parter with a first episode that I found mostly boring, a second part that was a big improvement, and a finale that was fine, I guess. 

First, the good. The “Superbabes” restaurant is a fun sight gag, but that’s all there really is to write home about in the first act. The middle is better, as the unlikely trio’s research brings them to a shack in the woods where assorted colorful hoodlums and hooligans gather, with visual references to the Adam West Batman series aplenty, and even includes two musical numbers, one of which is endearing and funny (we’ll get to the second in “the bad”). There’s even a toilet humor gag that managed to cross the line into getting an actual laugh from me; Harley has some greasy food, she begs for the Batmobile to be pulled over so that she can use the facilities, Batman assumes it’s a ruse to escape and refuses, Harley passes a great volume of gas, Nightwing begs to roll the window down, and Batman again refuses, saying that it “Smells like discipline.” It’s a good gag, as there’s an abundance of writers who adore Batman to the point of biblical idolatry, and to tweak their over-the-top stoicism is funny both with and without that context. The final act also includes a pretty funny bit, where it seems like the day will be saved by the appearance of Swamp Thing, here a nearly omniscient/omnipotent vegetation deity, but he really just shows up to wag his finger at the villain and affects the plot not at all. It’s like the seed of an idea for the kind of gags and bits that the Harley Quinn animated series pulls off, and although it’s in its infancy here, it’s a good joke. 

When it comes to the bad, I have to say, I don’t like Rauch as Harley. It’s funny, because I know she got her big break on Big Bang Theory, a series I have seen approximately 57 minutes of and all of them under duress, the same place that TV Harley Kaley Cuoco gathered much of her attention. (To me, I will always remember her from the endless promotion of 8 Simple Rules that aired constantly during reruns of Grounded for Life when I was in high school, as well as for her role as Billie, the Cousin Oliver of original recipe Charmed’s final season, because my brain is broken in so, so many ways.) Cuoco seems born to voice this role, while Rauch is doing … I don’t know, I’m sure it’s her best. It’s not quite as iconic as Sorkin’s original Harley, or as perfectly suited as Tara Strong’s chameleon-like version, or as unhinged as Cuoco’s ascension to animated Harley supreme. Sometimes, when watching the show, I can almost see Cuoco in the sound booth when she lets out one of Harley’s frustrated cries, really getting into the body language and everything. In this, Harley sounds so canned and rehearsed that you imagine that there was almost no motion during the entire recording session. It’s a very frustrating experience. This gets pushed past my tolerance limits when we have an entire musical performance of Rauch-as-Harley singing the seminal, perfect The Nerves (although obviously best known as a Blondie single) track “Hanging on the Telephone.” I’m not one to get upset when a filmmaker gets a little self-indulgent, but this is a real speedbump in this one, especially as it comes on the heels of the aforementioned fun music number. 

I wish that I could watch this with completely fresh eyes when it was a new release, without the baggage of a much better, funnier, more exciting, and better performed adaptation of the character. But we’re all trapped within the horizon of our experiences, so here I am, trying and failing to like this release. 

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond