Batman, the costumed crime-fighter who prowls the night skies in Gotham City, soon finds there's another vigilante in town knocking off prominent mob figures. Despite the scythe-like blade for a hand, a mechanical voice and the cloud of smoke that follows the figure wherever it goes, the police and outraged officials mistake the homicidal crusader for Batman himself and demand that the city's longtime hero be brought to justice. Meanwhile, Andrea Beaumont returns to town. She is the lost love of Bruce Wayne, the billionaire playboy who is Batman's alter ego, and was an integral part of Wayne's decision ten years earlier to don the cape and cowl. Now, she is back in his life and is no less a disruption than the return of his old archenemy, The Joker, who has a stake in seeing the annihilation of this new vigilante, whoever it proves to be.
"Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" is an entertaining animated flick that comes from the same team that brought us the 1990s TV cartoon series starring Batman. Certainly the series and this film, in terms of visual artistry, is leaps and bounds ahead of any previous superhero fare on TV. You'd have to go back to the Max Fleischer "Superman" short subjects of the 1940s, which helped to inspire the background and character designs here, to find any comparison. The plot, characterizations and dialogue are also far superior, but that's not saying much. This film, though, holds its own next to the average action movie. In fact, being an animated cartoon helps us to accept clichés and conventions that might be more irritating in a live-action film.
My biggest complaint is with the animation itself. The character designs are excellent, but the "acting" of the characters is fairly poor and prevents us from becoming more involved in their emotional lives than we otherwise might. The music score is good, but the pompous chorus that opens and closes the movie is yet another sign that superhero movies, since at least Tim Burton's "Batman" (1989), take themselves way too seriously.
"Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" is an entertaining animated flick that comes from the same team that brought us the 1990s TV cartoon series starring Batman. Certainly the series and this film, in terms of visual artistry, is leaps and bounds ahead of any previous superhero fare on TV. You'd have to go back to the Max Fleischer "Superman" short subjects of the 1940s, which helped to inspire the background and character designs here, to find any comparison. The plot, characterizations and dialogue are also far superior, but that's not saying much. This film, though, holds its own next to the average action movie. In fact, being an animated cartoon helps us to accept clichés and conventions that might be more irritating in a live-action film.
My biggest complaint is with the animation itself. The character designs are excellent, but the "acting" of the characters is fairly poor and prevents us from becoming more involved in their emotional lives than we otherwise might. The music score is good, but the pompous chorus that opens and closes the movie is yet another sign that superhero movies, since at least Tim Burton's "Batman" (1989), take themselves way too seriously.