Review of Comic Book Villains (2002) by Zac M — 20 Mar 2009

This Movie is loaded with comic book geek and a dash of dark humor, you'd think it would turn out pretty good. It's an independent film written and directed by James Robinson he's been in the comic book business for over twenty years (mostly working with DC), and penned the screenplay for "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen".

Robinson hasn't directed anything since this film and I haven't seen any upcoming screenplay projects (I'm not sure what that means, good or bad?). "Comic Book Villains" has a fairly decent array of actors DJ Qualls(The New Guy), Donal Logue(Grounded for Life), Michael Rapaport, and Cary Elwes (Robin Hood: Men in Tights) and I enjoyed their performances.

The plot is where I have a problem, for a dark humor it makes a lot of sense but I have a hard time believing these characters would actually go to these lengths they do, to procure the "Holy Grail" of comic book collections.

Everything gets a little too out of hand and a bit unbelievable for the cohesive-ness of the story and I'll blame that more on the director/writer than the actors themselves. Aside from the crazy climax "Comic Book Villains" was kind of entertaining, I only wish there was more character development so you might understand why things turn out the way they do.

Really this can only be recommended to comic book junkies, almost anyone else will think nothing of it unless they're a huge fan of Dark humor and can look past all the references they might not get.