Crisis in Celebrity Voice Acting

Crisis on Two Earths has a bit of a complicated story behind it. A few years back, the DC Animated Universe was in full swing and the show Justice League was a major success. During Season 2, the episode "A Better World" aired. "A Better World" was about the Justice League meeting an alternate universe version of themselves, the Justice Lords. These alternates were exactly like them except they had different costumes, were 2 years ahead in the future and had decided to take absolute control of Earth and had by their point in time, killed Lex Luthor. The episode was well-received and went on to inspire the main storyline of Justice League Unlimited's 1st 2 seasons. In reality however, the creators of Justice League wanted to do a story about the Crime Syndicate of America, a truly evil group of supervillains who were all twisted versions of the Justice League. At the time however, DC was not willing to give the creators of Justice League the rights to using the Crime Syndicate characters. Between JL and JLU, one of the writers wrote a script for Justice League: Worlds Collide, a direct-to-video movie about the Crime Syndicate and explaining the origins of Wonder Woman's invisible jet, the reason for expanding the Justice League, and why the Watchtower had become fully staffed. The idea was trashed, again, because they could not secure the rights to the Crime Syndicate characters. After JLU finished airing, they finally secured the rights to the CSA characters while they started making the DC Animated Universe movies. Using the script from Worlds Collide, they finally produced the movie they wanted and they decided to use celebrity voice actors, something that Bruce Timm and his guys had used successfully with Superman: Doomsday, Wonder Woman, and Justice League: The New Frontier.

This time however, the celebrity voice acting falls completely flat. Billy Baldwin is one of the worst voices for Batman I've ever heard, Mark Harmon seems to have no idea what he's reading as Superman, and Gina Torres has little to no interest in the plot as Superwoman. The 2 voice actors who DO shine however, are Chris Noth as Lex Luthor and James Woods as Owlman. Both take their roles very seriously and understand the plot (or are pretending very effectively), something the other big names don't. Unfortunately, like most animated movies with big name actors, the professional voice actors do the BEST job. The animation, as usual for a Bruce Timm production, is stellar and is pretty flawless. The story takes one tiny concept from Crisis on Infinite Earths that slows down the action considerably, but it's pretty harmless and doesn't tremendously affect the overarching plot. In the end, this movie should be considered CANON to Justic League and Justice League Unlimited, but it is NOT required viewing.

Overall Score: 3 James Woods noses out of 5
While Superman and Batman are pretty groan-worthy in the voice acting department and the writing is pretty lazy, the movie in general is pretty good. It's certainly the weakest of the DCAO, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Check it out, just don't bother with the blu-ray edition.