(courtesy IMDb (c) Prime Video)
You have to hand it to anyone who looks at a venerable piece of pop culture property, in this Batman who is 84 years young, and thinks there must a way to bring some new life to it.
It’s a brave thing to do because people have OPINIONS on character they know and love, and as far as Batman is concerned, that means respecting the brooding, dark nature of a superhero who got into the evil fighting game in part because of crime-triggered childhood trauma.
But what if, wondered director of Merry Little Batman, if Batman wasn’t quite so moody and maybe was a bit more mainstream-resident and connected more closely with his own closely-knit family?
There are so many different types of Batman projects. They’re all a similar ilk … We wanted to see Batman in a slightly different lens, right? So instead of seeing that brooding presence of Batman, where he’s just always Batman-ing, and he’s like depressed, or what have you, it was like, what if he’s a dad? What if he’s in full dad mode? He has a beard, he has flannel, he has sneakers. Instead of a tuxedo. And what does that world look like for him? What would his son look like? It’s something different that you don’t normally see while still being tethered to the 90-year history that we all expect of Batman. (Movieweb)
The result of all the inventive left-of-centre thinking is a sparklingly sweet and hilariously funny Christmas special that reframes Batman aka Bruce Wayne (Luke Wilson) from darkly intense soul to someone reawakened to life by his eight-year-old son Damian (Yonas Kibreab) who, under the care of Alfred the Butler (James Cromwell) is eager to begin a life of fighting the entrenched crime of Gotham City.
There’s just a couple of problems – (1) Gotham doesn’t have any crime anymore after Batman, impelled by the impending birth of his son with super villain Talia al Ghul – for all the lore and yes, this non-Batman lore savvy reviewer had to go and quickly educate himself, head to good old Wikipedia – went on a noble rampage to wipe it all out, and (2) Damian, who later struggles with his good and bad inner selves, isn’t ready to be a superhero; after all he’s eight, and is really just a chaotic ball of ill-judged, cat-chasing childlikeness.
In Merry Little Batman, it’s Christmas time and Gotham City is gearing to celebrate as only a crime0free city can with a parade of giant Santas and snowmen and a marching band, stores filled with luminously decked out goodies, and a blue-trimmed, lit tree soaring to the heavens.
The celebrations are big, very Christmassy and have got Damian excited to spend Christmas with his dad and maybe getting a utility belt of his own so he can start fighting crime too.
But what will Santa bring him and will Christmas play out the way he expects?
As it turns out, it’s not Santa that Damian should be worrying about.
At the same time as dad Bruce is called away to Newfoundland to fight some weirdly-situated crime, Damian finds himself in a Home Alone-esque scenario when two sparring and ultimately inept burglars, Francine and Terry (Natalie Palamides and Michael Fielding respectively) decided Wayne Mansion is the perfect place to steal lots and lots of stuff from (the tree along has about a thousand presents grouped around it which suggests that while Bruce is a good dad and well-judged disciplinarian, he may over indulge on the gift front a tad.
Unlike Macaulay Culkin however, Damian, while full of bravery (eventually) and determination to best the baddies, doesn’t quite succeed and finds himself at the mercy of The Joker (David Hornsby), Poison Ivy (Therese McLaughlin) and Bane (Chris Sullivan), who are also joined by Mr. Freeze (Dolph Adomain), and The Penguin (Brian George).
They take advantage of the fact that Damian is still a self-centred, shortsighted kid and at one point The Joker even goes so far as to say he’s acting just a selfish super villain which horrifies and emboldens Damian who tries to stop the criminals wrecking Christmas in Gotham and stopping him having the festive season he wants with his dad.
With some fun warm-and-fuzzy messaging thrown into the mix, adroitly balanced with a ton of neatly delivered oneliners and a sense of the silly and the visually ridiculous which works an absolute treat, Merry Little Batman is a ton of fun to watch and a return to classic Christmas programming that plays havoc with expectations and lands in a charmingly moving festive sweet spot.
Channelling much of the energy, irreverence and affectionate parodic mania of the LEGO takes on many properties including Batman, while still being very much its own imaginatively, inventive slice of frenetically funny joy, Merry Little Batman never puts a foot wrong, celebrating Christmas beautifully and giving us a whole new take on the Caped Crusader who it turns out does have a beating heart, loved flannel and absolutely rocks a cape and beard.
With the intent of seeing “as much of the Batman universe with [an artistic] design filter as possible” – the movie will be followed by a series called Bat-Family – Merry Little Batman looks one-of-a-kind fun with some world-building bolstering a story which is heartfelt, vibrantly funny and surreally manic and which manages to be both a send-up and an homage, and fittingly for this time of year, a reminder of why it is really the most wonderful time of the year.
Merry Little Batman streams on Prime Video.