#world & how it works is very blatantly based on 'the killing joke'!joker but magnified by a power of ten soooo yeah)

[amorremanet]

holy excited opinion-sharing!

Okay, so, for anyone who needs a laugh and likes anything related to Batman, I seriously recommend last year’s, “Return of the Caped Crusaders” from DC animated

It’s a 50th anniversary tribute to the campy 60’s Batman TV show (complete with Adam West as Bruce, Burt Ward as Dick, Julie Newmar as Catwoman, and a moment where Batman sees triple while looking at Catwoman, and the other two Catwomen are Eartha Kitt and Lee Meriweather). The plot and the hijinks are suitably ridiculous for a tribute to 60’s campy Batman, there is all of the outrageous wordplay (and of course, a ton of weird, “Holy [insert something here]!” catchphrases from Robin), it’s colorful and wacky and just really, really fun

Personally, my favorite part of it is that the flick is self-aware but without being obnoxiously meta or a gritty deconstruction or anything. Like, it takes a couple of shots at contemporary, grimdarker takes on Batman — though, relative to the source material, “contemporary” means, “anything from Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie forward (except for the Joel Schumacher Bat-flicks, since they’re not grimdark),” so there are myriad shout-outs to and, “ha ha GOTCHA” moments aimed at the Burtonverse, the Nolanverse, the 90’s animated series, and a handful of other Bat-nonsense

—but unlike all the times when a grimdark and gritty Bat-something has pointlessly kicked the 60’s TV show in the stomach for no reason beyond, “ew, it’s SILLY, and CAMPY, and FUN, how very dare it be silly and campy and fun, this is BATMAN, show a little gravitas (and for our purposes, ‘gravitas’ means ANGST AND MISERY AND UNRELENTING GRIMDARK BC THAT IS HOW YOU MAKE ~*TRUE ART*~” or whatever? “Return of the Caped Crusaders” isn’t here to deconstruct anything or really bash any other Bat-stories.

Seriously, this movie just wants to be weird and silly and have a good time, and it does all of those things. The self-awareness also helps enhance the campiness, for me, like? “Return of the Caped Crusaders” doesn’t mock the 60’s TV show, but celebrates and revels in it

All that the self-awareness ends up meaning here is that, now, the text is in on the joke of how silly and campy it is. And, being in on the joke now, it invites everyone to have a good time while: the Riddler geeks out about stealing the world’s first puzzle; Penguin and Catwoman shoehorn weird references to birds and cats respectively into random bits of conversation for no particular reasons; the Joker tells jokes that the movie admits are not funny and laughs at his own schtick anyway; the Chief of Police and Commissioner Gordon are totally inept but endearing; Batman and Robin make bigger reaches and leaps of logic than Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day but it works;

Robin regularly says shit like, “Holy crumbling infrastructure!” (that was in response to a ton of potholes); he and Batman escape an over-the-top death trap that defies all logic and fly a Bat-Rocket into space because of reasons; there is an abandoned frozen food factory that has a sign outside that says, “abandoned frozen food factory” and inside of it is a giant oven with a sign above it that says, “GIANT OVEN”; and Bruce appears to flirt with Robin and Catwoman in more or less equal amounts while Dick’s Aunt Harriet thinks that the big secret at Wayne Manor is that Bruce and Dick are constantly sneaking off to have dates and/or sex — and we all know that it’s ridiculous, but it’s fun, and that’s kind of the point

(—as far as that goes with Dick… eh? Since it’s based on the campy TV show version of Batman and company, Dick is still officially Bruce’s ward, and there’s one moment where Catwoman asks if Robin is even old enough to drive the freaking Catmobile and he quips about having a learner’s permit… but the movie overall still treats him as if he is in his mid-twenties, and there is basically nothing paternal or even vaguely familial about his and Bruce’s relationship.

Because it’s based on the 60’s camp TV show, where Batman and Robin sure do act like boyfriends and regularly say and do things that sound like sexual innuendos, all while maintaining that they are only the most hetero of upstanding super-chums, much like the insistence that anyone aboard the USS Enterprise is straight when they are clearly not)

Basically, it’s ridiculous, colorful, silly, so far over-the-top that it can no longer see the top and may have just left this plane of existence entirely, beautifully and indulgently campy, and blah blah blah with all the emotional realism and the serious business, because I love that stuff with my superheroic shenanigans, too — but “Return of the Caped Crusaders” is just good, exuberant, campy fun and that’s all that it needs to be. I haven’t laughed that hard in a while, and I cannot recommend this flick enough

Also, Batman and Catwoman dance the Batusi over the end credits, because of course they do, because why the heck not