The story of Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman is a simple enough one. Gotham city has a new crime fighter, and she's sporting the same symbol as the city's most famous vigilante Batman. With a reckless disregard for human life, this Batwoman is dead set on taking down the villainous trio of Rupert Thorne, Carlton Duquesne and the Penguin at any cost. Unhappy with the methods employed by this new "hero", Batman begins to investigate the identity of Batwoman while himself trying to stop the Penguin and his partners. Every time Batman thinks he's close to uncovering the truth about Batwoman, however, his suspect is cleared of involvement and the Dark Knight must start his investigation anew.
On a technical level, the story done by Alan Burnett for Mystery of the Batwoman is pretty well constructed. Burnett cleverly crafts a tale that keeps the audience guessing about the identity of Batwoman up until the third act where the big reveal finally takes place. Unfortunately, the actual impact of this unveiling just doesn't feel all that substantial. It's hard for me to discuss the reasons why this reveal doesn't work without spoiling the surprise, so I'll just say that this mystery - though well hidden - doesn't have the emotional impact that Batman Mask of the Phantasm had, even though Burnett was clearly trying to channel the success he had with that earlier story. Still, there's some nice subtly to the stories writing with lots of details becoming more obvious upon second viewing.
Unfortunately, the scope and emotion in this movie just doesn't feel DTV worthy. Between the unimpressive weapons manufacturing mcguffin and the poor characterization, I just don't see why this story warranted a feature film video release. One example of this can be found in Burnett's attempts to give back-story to the numerous suspects and new characters used in Mystery of the Batwoman. Though admirable in effort, far too many of these characters either end up being underdeveloped (Sonia) or uninteresting (Kathy). In fact, the only person I had any emotional sympathy for was Roxanne, everybody else felt like a cipher. Characters outside of the Batwoman mystery don't get any better either. The criminal team of Penguin, Thorne and Duquesne just isn't all that impressive, and their nefarious scheme to manufacture and smuggle hi-tech weapons is exceedingly generic. Even the latter inclusion of Bane into this story does little to help these lackluster antagonists. If this were just a two-part TV story, I wouldn't have a problem with the scope of this plot. But turning something like this into a feature length film doesn't feel appropriate. DTV stories need to be more visceral, the villains more threatening and characters more engaging. Such was not the case with Mystery of the Batwoman.
Another thing that bugged me was the awkwardly romantic conversation between Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) and Bruce Wayne (Batman) early in the film. Why was this even in the movie? Besides the fact that a Bruce and Barbara hookup is exceedingly creepy (after all she was dating Bruce's former ward Dick Grayson - the original Robin - in Batman Subzero), it serves no purpose to the rest of the story, and - given the movies ending - feels very out of place. Now, I'm guessing the reason this scene was included was to tie this movie into the Batman Beyond timeline (Bruce and Barbara are former lovers in that show ... which I find disturbing), and thus solidify the continuity between Batman the Animated Series, Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman and Batman Beyond. Though this would make sense, I still feel this exchange was an unnecessary interruption in the story (Barbara doesn't even show up throughout the rest of the film) and ultimately takes away from the character dynamics being created for the movie.
So clearly I had some issues with the writing of this film. A lot of these problems stem from an overabundance of characters, others from the scope of the plot and some are just personal (I have no idea why I'm so hung up on Batman and Batgirl's romance; I just can't stand it for some reason). All that said, I still admire a lot of the craftsmanship put into this story; the pacing is solid, the mystery is well hidden and the humor is pretty good. As I said before, this would have made a great two-part story for Batman the Animated Series, but it's not nearly meaty enough to warrant a DTV.
My avouchment that Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman is better suited for TV doesn't end with the story though. I also feel that the visuals in this film would look more at home in an animated series than they do on a direct-to-video feature. It's not that the film looks bad or anything (because it doesn't), it just isn't very theatrical. Compared to other Batman DTV's, and even the Batman/Superman TV crossover, the animation and staging found here looks very pedestrian. Though generally stronger than your average episode of Batman the Animated Series, I can remember numerous episodes from that same show with better visuals than Mystery of the Batwoman.
Another unimpressive area of the film would be in its design. Batwoman's silver costume just doesn't quite fit into the Batman universe, the hi-tech weapons are too sci-fi (like something out of Superman) and the backgrounds - though well rendered - lack ambition. This is doubly disappointing since the film was created in 2003 when DTV quality was supposed to be on the rise. Heck, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker was released four years earlier and its character design and backgrounds were much stronger than this.
It's not that the visuals in Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman are bad, they're just not good enough to warrant their medium. Not only is the films animation eclipsed by all of the previous Batman DTVs, but also by numerous Batman the Animated Series episodes and plenty of other DTV features outside of the DCAU. Normally I wouldn't make such a fuss over a movie that technically looks solid, but when you're a part of the Batman franchise, expectations can run rather high.
Fortunately, the voice acting in Mystery of the Batwoman does live up to its predecessors. Being that the story takes place within the DC Animated Universe, almost all the voice actors from the original Batman cartoon showed up to reprise their roles. In fact, the only disappointment I had with the voice over work in this movie was with the Penguin. Instead of Paul Williams (the original voice actor for the Penguin) we got David Ogden Stiers, a significant step down in my opinion. To be fair, Stiers does give a pretty decent performance, but Williams had such a unique voice one cannot help but notice his absence. Other than that, this films cast is excellent.
Musically I thought the score for Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman was pretty good too. It definitely had a sound all its own, and the Batwoman theme music was a nice touch. While I wouldn't rank it above the other Batman DTVs, the audio portion of this film holds its own rather nicely.
Taken as a whole, Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman is a decent film. The production value isn't what it should be considering when it was made, but the writing - while a tab unambitious - does have some nice touches and is well refined. When compared to the animated Batman features that came before it, however, this film comes up very wanting. Things like the animation, character selection, and story just scream TV, as does the full frame aspect ratio (which really should've been widescreen considering it was released post 2000). Additionally, the DVD itself has some compression issues, with banding occurring more than once during the course of the film. If you're a fan of Batman the Animated Series (or more specifically the New Batman Adventures), Mystery of the Batwoman is worth a watch (though I probably wouldn't recommend buying it). If, however, you are just looking for a really good animated Batman feature, I would suggest going with any of the aforementioned DTVs I listed throughout this review before bothering with Batwoman.
