The Force of A Bat - Review

Congratulations to Josh Cousins for putting in the time and effort to put together a stop animation film. Something i never in my life would have the patience to do. The Force of a Bat is a homemade, uneducated, local stop animation film. I will be reviewing it based on these circumstances. The Force of a Bat starts out with a prison escape with famous batman villians such as Two-Face and The Joker. Jesse Tulmans laugh as The Joker was excellent and i quite enjoyed it. The Batman Villians then release Darth Vader. They all conspire a master plan and quickly make allies with Jabba the Hut (who immediately takes status as leader). It cuts to Batman who comes to save the day and the story begins. There is a rancor battle, an army of droids and an ingenious chase scene.

The Force of a Bat was fast paced and used comedic devices. The lighting was too bright but it didn't take away from the experience. The frames were choppy but i cant complain. There was 1 hour and 12 minutes worth of individually photographed frames. That adds up to about 26,000 frames. It can be as choppy as it wants. The transitions were nice. It had good use of angles although i noticed a lack of master shots. The voice acting was very well done with Josh doing most of the voices himself. It did get a bit lathargic at times but that was compesated for with a well chosen and recognisable score using music from Pirates of The Carribean, The Dark Knight and Transformers as well as well timed sound effects. The enviroments were well constructed and gave a nice lego feel. I am not entirely sure though what prompted Josh to use pencil crayon instead of marker for his back drops. Hopefully, it was just a lack of resources. The Batcave felt natural and i loved the Star Wars themed desert enviroment. The plot of the movie had good consistency and the character arches were recylcled well. The rendidtions of the characters we are all familiar with were great. Especially Patrick.

I recommend this film if you want to follow a very promising director in his first homeade films. His concept and ideas have plenty of potential and it is definitely worth checking out.

All in all as your first film i give you a 7.3/10

I look forward to your next title

~Tin27