Harley Quinn: The Complete First Season (DVD)
DVD Reviews | Jun 1st, 2020
Starring: Kaley Cuoco, Lake Bell, Alan Tudyk, Ron Funches, Tony Hale, Jason Alexander, J.B. Smoove, Diedrich Bader, Phil LaMarr, Wanda Sykes, Alfred Molina, Wayne Knight
Created By: Justin Halpern, Dean Lorey, Patrick Schumacker
Directed By: Various
Written By: Various
Studio: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment
Buy On Amazon
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of this DVD set that I reviewed in this post. The opinions I share are my own.
Premiering on the DC Universe streaming service last year, “Harley Quinn: The Complete First Season” has arrived on DVD and features all 13 half-hour episodes of the adult animated action-comedy series.
Taking cues from the current comic book series and live-action movies, “Harley Quinn: The Complete First Season” introduces us to an empowered Harley Quinn who realizes that she’s in a shitty relationship with a chaotic psychopath and that overall, she’s not a bad person…just a product of bad situations. Well this version of Harley Quinn aims to set herself free and make a name for herself in the villain circuit. Along the way she forms a team with the most unlikely of suspects. Harley’s band of misfits and freaks includes Poison Ivy, King Shark, Dr. Psycho and Clayface and the group learn to deal with each other without murdering one another all while providing plenty of comic relief at the expense of quite a few swear words and over-the-top violence.
The show is aimed at a mature audience and, much like her comic book and movie counterparts…takes inspiration from Deadpool’s R rated antics. There is extreme blood and gore, plenty of F-bombs and quite a few sexual situations but everything works well with the writer’s brand of dark and twisted humor. It’s meant to push the boundaries, which is the point of the streaming service and has worked well in shows like “Titans” and “Doom Patrol”. The show also has a star-studded cast with Kaley Cuoco voicing Harley and Alan Tudyk , Jason Alexander, Wayne Knight, Wanda Sykes, Alfred Molina and Phil LaMarr also lending their voices to the show to name a few. Deidrich Bader also reprises his role as the voice of Batman once again!
Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from the show as this was the first animated series from DC to be rated for mature audiences only, but the live-action streaming shows have been absolutely great and that seemed to carry over into “Harley Quinn”. It has the right amount of heart, foul-mouthed potty humor and extreme violence to make this 90s kid happy. It’s kind of what you wish some of the 80s/90s animated series could have been like if they weren’t just marketed to sell toys. “Harley Quinn: The Complete First Season” is fun, witty and laugh-out-loud crazy and a hopefully the start of a new line of animated shows similar to the R rated animated movies from DC and Warner Bros. Animation.
Special Features:
N/A
Audio:
English 5.1 Surround
English SDH, French Subtitles
Video:
1.33:1
Bottom Line: The show is a fun, over-the-top romp through a new dimension of the DC Universe. While it is repetitive at times, the revolving cast of characters and cameos help keep things interesting. Harley Quinn fans old and new will be pleased with the strong writing and depiction of the character who is no longer just the Joker’s “sidekick”.
Running Time: 296 Mins
Rating: TV-MA
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating:
