![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It's been so long since I could actually watch a cartoon on Saturday morning and thoroughly enjoy it -- not have my intelligence insulted, or be filled with an overwhelming desire to reach for the 'fast-forward' button on the remote.
But this morning the cartoon series Batman: the Brave and the Bold (which rarely occupies my full attention, and occasionally seems too lame even for watching while eating my Saturday morning oatmeal) finally justified its continued existence on my DVR timer list with a really clever, well-done rip-off of the BtVS episode "Once More, With Feeling": Mayhem of the Music Meister.
Neil Patrick Harris as the voice of the musical super-villain (hmm, wonder if anybody ELSE ever thought of doing that first?) is superb, singing his heart out and putting the 'fun' in 'dysfunctional' (yes, he loves Black Canary for her voice, but it's not like that will stop him from killing her, 'cause, you know, villainy is still his first love).
Not only were the tunes and lyrics rather well done ("If only he could love me, . . . like we love fighting villainy" was almost poignant!), but it was also inventive and interesting to LOOK at. Plus the writer of the lyrics for this episode included a surprising number of winks and nods at the old, campy live-action "Batman" from the 1960's (at least, that's where I encountered the idea of dancing the 'batusi' and using 'Bat shark repellant'), which kind of made the camp of this animated episode seem all the more clever and respectable, in comparison.
I'd almost forgotten what it used to be like in the early 1990's to enjoy a Saturday morning cartoon as an ADULT (starting in 1992 with the introduction of both the animated "X-Men" and "Batman: The Animated Series") -- a feeling I hadn't enjoyed since "Justice League Unlimited" was cancelled some years back.
What a nice surprise to wake up to! I'd advise anyone who enjoys musicals and/or animated super heroes from the DC universe to check it out in re-runs, if you didn't catch it on the Cartoon Network this time around.
But this morning the cartoon series Batman: the Brave and the Bold (which rarely occupies my full attention, and occasionally seems too lame even for watching while eating my Saturday morning oatmeal) finally justified its continued existence on my DVR timer list with a really clever, well-done rip-off of the BtVS episode "Once More, With Feeling": Mayhem of the Music Meister.
Neil Patrick Harris as the voice of the musical super-villain (hmm, wonder if anybody ELSE ever thought of doing that first?) is superb, singing his heart out and putting the 'fun' in 'dysfunctional' (yes, he loves Black Canary for her voice, but it's not like that will stop him from killing her, 'cause, you know, villainy is still his first love).
Not only were the tunes and lyrics rather well done ("If only he could love me, . . . like we love fighting villainy" was almost poignant!), but it was also inventive and interesting to LOOK at. Plus the writer of the lyrics for this episode included a surprising number of winks and nods at the old, campy live-action "Batman" from the 1960's (at least, that's where I encountered the idea of dancing the 'batusi' and using 'Bat shark repellant'), which kind of made the camp of this animated episode seem all the more clever and respectable, in comparison.
I'd almost forgotten what it used to be like in the early 1990's to enjoy a Saturday morning cartoon as an ADULT (starting in 1992 with the introduction of both the animated "X-Men" and "Batman: The Animated Series") -- a feeling I hadn't enjoyed since "Justice League Unlimited" was cancelled some years back.
What a nice surprise to wake up to! I'd advise anyone who enjoys musicals and/or animated super heroes from the DC universe to check it out in re-runs, if you didn't catch it on the Cartoon Network this time around.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
Another thing I particularly enjoyed was recognizing my favorite actors from other series in the voice work of the guest stars: Nathan Fillion as the cowboy "Vigilante", Gina Torres as "Vixen" (the other woman in Green Lantern's love-life), Morena Baccarin as "Black Canary", Amy Acker as "Huntress", Jeffrey Coombs (my favorite Andorian on 'Enterprise' and the Vorta Weyoun and Quark's Ferengi nemesis Brunt on 'DS9') as "The Question," Juliet Landau as the supervillain "Tala", Michael T. Weiss ('The Pretender') as Jason Blood/"Etrigan", Carl Lumbly ('M.A.N.T.I.S.') as the compelling voice of J'onn J'onzz/"Martian Manhunter", etc.
I've been a bit disappointed by some of the straight-to-DVD DC Universe movies that have come out over the past three years (with the exception of the excellent 2007 Superman: Doomsday (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_Doomsday) which featured James Marsters as the voice of an oh-so-suave-and-coldly-brilliant Lex Luthor and Adam Baldwin as a surprisingly effective Clark Kent/Superman), but the old JL/JLU shows still hold up well.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold has been SORT of doing a 'Justice League' variation (the theme is that it's never JUST Batman, but always Batman working WITH someone else each week, often another DC-universe hero associated with the JL) but -- unlike The Batman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Batman_(TV_series)) on Fox, which did its own, less successful and entertaining versions of classic JL stories like "Secret Origins" -- so far I haven't seen them RE-tell stories that I've already encountered on JL/JLU.