I love the original “Batman: The Animated Series” and “Batman: Mask of the Phantasm” is one of the best “Batman” movies ever made so imagine my enthusiasm when I heard that there was a new animated film featuring the Caped Crusader from the same people that made “Batman: The Animated Series”. Get ready to be disappointed folks.

Batman (Kevin Conroy) and Nightwing (Loren Lester) are forced to team up with Harley Quinn (the Joker’s girlfriend and sidekick) in order to stop Poison Ivy and the Floronic Man from executing a dastardly plan that threatens the entire globe. This unstable alliance is the world’s only hope in averting a major disaster.

Kevin Conroy is of course really good as Batman and it is nice that he is back once again to voice Batman. The voice acting from pretty much everybody is really good but the problems are with the way the characters behave and their dialog. At times you could be forgiven for mistaking the dialog in this film for a spoof dub on the internet. There is a truly cringeworthy moment in which Harley Quinn produces a very unpleasant smell and Nightwing almost throws up. The design of the characters is actually taken from the fourth series of “Batman: The Animated Series” (also known as “The New Batman Adventures”) and while the characters look okay, I prefer the look of the characters in the earlier episodes.

The animation is fine and even some of the action sequences are fine but the characters and the dialog just do not work at all. There are too many dirty jokes and too many lines that just do not belong in “Batman” movie.  While “Batman And Harley Quinn” offers a few funny moments here and there, it’s pretty painful to watch a truly great superhero involved in such in an idiotic mess. I love the campy 60s “Batman” show but this is just lame. In the movie’s defence, it’s vastly superior to “Batman: The Killing Joke”.