Review of Justice League: Doom (2012) by Rj M — 07 Mar 2012

As a kid, "Challenge Of The Superfriends" was always one of my favorite cartoons on Saturday mornings. All the superheroes and supervillains squaring off week after week was something to look forward to. True to current Hollywood form, the Superfriends have gotten a reboot with this newest entry in the DC Animated universe. Unfortunately, like a lot of reboots and re-imaginings, the end result leaves something to be desired.

Master villain Vandal Savage recruits several super villains to take out the respectives nemses, all to serve his own master plan of wiping out half the world's population, and establishing his newly formed Legion Of Doom as rulers of what is left of humanity.

Not a bad story, but the problem with it is that there is so much story to tell with all the various characters that it all feels extremely truncated. Things happen way to fast with very little explanation. Nothing feels fleshed out, and the whole affair feels very hurried.

However it's that lack of exposition is the thing that makes this movie virtually wall to wall action. So anyone that is simply expecting to see the heroes go toe to toe with the villains will not be disappointed.

The actors are uniformly good, which is no surprise. Kevin Conroy and Tim Daly have been providing the voices for Batman and Superman fo more than a decade. Their performances are effortless. Smallville veteran Michael Rosenbaum gets the laughs as Flash, and Nathan Fillion gets the lion's share of the dramatic work for his turn as Green Lantern.

However, in the past, the DC Animated movies have almost always been able to find a great balance of action and story, never more than in last year's All-Star Superman. Like this movie, that one told and epic, multi-arc storyline, filled with action. But unlike that film, this movie struggles with it's story, while solidly delivering on the action.

Not a bad animated film by any means, but a disappointing step down from the heights that DC had reached in their previous films.