When I saw the art style of this DC animated film, I hated it. And that didn’t change with the watching… but the villain character models in the second half at least suited the look. And while I hated the first half hour, the rest of the film turned out pretty decent.

While Batman is away, his 8 year old son Damian Wayne will play… at being the dark knight. He has to fend off burglars at Wayne Manor and then confront many of Batman’s rogue’s gallery all by himself. Over Christmas… so it’s a holiday movie too, I guess.

The first half hour of this flick tested me. Whether I can put up with these off-putting, malformed characters or not. They did a disservice to Batman and his chin but what they did to poor Alfred was pure malevolence. But Damian Wayne at least looked like a human and, in the second half of the film, it’s pretty ok to make the villains look like twisted monsters.

I think the art style will work for those who grew up on similar character designs in cartoons. This is probably just a generational thing… so get off my lawn!!!

As far as the actual movie, it started real bad and I was sharpening my knives for an evisceration. But the damn thing got better until I realized I was actually kind of enjoying it. There are some fun winks at DC and Batman that were amusing and the villains were entertaining. I never really connected with Damian but he ultimately kind of works by the heartwarming-ish finale.

This is far from my favorite Batman toon and if I never see this art style again, I’ll stop complaining about the generic look of the regular DC toons (no I won’t). The flick ultimately finds its charm and kind of works ok as a Christmas movie too.

Score: 75