A giant kryptonite meteor is hurtling towards the Earth! This looks like a job for… Lex Luthor!?
No it’s not a parallel Earth or even a dream. In Superman/Batman: Public Enemies
President Luthor convinces the country that the kryptonite meteor is affecting Superman’s mind and puts a $1 billion bounty on the Man of Steel that pits him against friend and foe alike.
The opening credits, which consist of Stars & lightning bolts flying across the screen à la the old Wonder Woman TV show, set the scene for the rest of the movie, in that they’re cheap & cheesy.
Many of the characters just look wrong. Starfire is flimsy-looking and Power Girl’s eyes are almost as big as her boobs! Then there are these annoying flesh-colored squiggly lines that are supposed to show the contours of the characters’ noses but all they really do is distract you. Not to worry though, what Public Enemies lacks in character designs, it more than makes up for in shininess (sarcasm).
The voice acting is alright, well except for Allison Mack’s very whiny Power Girl. At first I absolutely hated Corey Burton’s douchey sounding Captain Marvel. But after I thought about it, I realized that’s exactly how he would sound, particularly with lines like “It doesn’t take the wisdom of Solomon to know you should stay down,” after knocking Superman on his butt.
The short length of the movie never allows for any real sense that Superman & Batman are on the run. It’s just one slugfest after another. However having so many villains & heroes gunning for the “fugitives” means none of them ever get the time or justice they deserve with the possible exception of Metallo, who is unfortunately taken out early on. And when the fight scenes aren’t short, you kind of wish they were like when Batman gets caught in Hawkman’s net. We see Bats slowly clipping away at the net with what are presumably Bat-scissors. The camera cuts away only to return to more clipping. Meanwhile Hawkman hovers above Batman telling him to knock it off rather than, oh I don’t – CLUBBING HIM UNCONSCIOUS!
At only 67 minutes long, you’d expect a lot of extras. And there are, just none that have anything to do with the movie you’re watching (unless you buy the 2 disc or blu-ray edition). Instead there are featurettes & trailers for previously released movies that frankly you’d be better off seeing anyway. It’s not surprise that trailer is equally short but not even tons of title screens can cover up that fact that there’s nothing worth seeing here.
