BATMAN RETURNS
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
BATMAN RETURNS is a film directed by Tim Burton, from a screenplay by Daniel Waters. It stars Michael Keaton, Michelle Pfeiffer, Danny DeVito, Christopher Walken, Michael Gogh, Pat Hingle, and Michael Murphy. Music by Danny Elfman. Production designed by Bo Welsh. Rated PG-13, for violence and sexual innuendo.
BATMAN RETURNS, I hardly need say, is the sequel to the 1989 benchmark film BATMAN. I had thought that I would not bother adding another review to the tsunami of critical and other reactions to what must be the film event of the Summer of '92, and then I went to see it. I think my reactions are different enough from the ones I've seen so far to justify yet another review. In sum, I loved it unstintingly, I grinned like a maniac from beginning to end in a way I haven't since I stopped dropping acid in the early '70s, I grinned until my face ached. I laughed out loud. I cheered, especially Catwoman. I was dazzled by the design and the cinematography. I had a wonderful time.
This is not to say the film could not have been better, that it didn't have its problems, its deficiencies, but what we have is so good, so much fun, that I really couldn't have stood it to be better. Thanks heavens for things like Tim Burton's well-known disregard for plot, for Daniel Waters' crudeness, for models that looked like models, and for Danny DeVito's makeup and costume which weigh him down like an anchor.
Tim Burton may well be the perfect director for our MTV-soaked sensibilities in that he is so overwhelmingly a visual artist that he cheerfully sacrifices all other artistic considerations to the Look. When I criticized EDWARD SCISSORHANDS in this forum for plot holes that would have swallowed a Mack truck, people eagerly informed it was a fairy tale and so little considerations like logic and continuity need not apply (but where did he get that damned ice?). I still consider ES to be his weakest effort to date, just as I still think BEETLEJUICE is the best of the four Burton movies I have seen. Here in BATMAN RETURNS the Look is everything. "I don't know about you, Miss Kitty, but I feel purr-fectly yummy," Catwoman says the first time she dons her new costume; she is her outfit; in her civvies she is quite a different person. Bruce Wayne could never do the things Batman does; he's wearing the wrong clothes. Oswald Coddlepot wears Dickensian drag; Penguin rips away human clothes with his humanity, such as it is. Gotham City is literally under a cloud as oppressive as its Fritz Lang architecture and its Stalinist colossi. And all those faces everywhere in this most impersonal of all cities, are they masks, watchers, or tutelary deities? The photography frames individually and beautifully composed painterly portraits and cityscapes, all swimming in the same darkness as the characters. The only human part of the story that attracts Burton is the confusion and twisted psyches of the heroes and villains, suitably interested more in stirring up the line between them than in sorting them out into neat categories, more interested in their "difficulty with duality" than in spotlighting their singularity.
Of the principals, Michael Keaton has the most difficult job. Everyone else gets to go over the top, but he has to be strong and masterful, a god as impersonal as his cowl can make him. But within the straitjacket of his persona, he gives us a man troubled by his obsession, introspective, trapped, struggling to understand. His Bruce Wayne is more human this time, not incapable of jibing Alfred or of trying to make a connection with the one woman who might be capable of understanding him.
Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman is completely captivating; of course, the transformation from Selina Kyle makes no logical sense, but it's wonderful and exciting to watch. The feminist text that informs her character gives it some meaning, some resonance in our non-comic-book world. Pfeiffer presents Kyle/Catwoman in several modes and degrees, all of them fascinating to watch. But it is as Catwoman that she dominates this film, the way Jack Nicholson dominated the previous one. She slinks, insinuates, and handles her whip with outrageous sexuality. She can't quite out-fight Batman, but he never breaks her. She's one troubled pussycat, but you have got to appreciate her. I do hope we see her again.
As for DeVito, the best thing we can say is that he never reminds us of Burgess Meredith in a dinner suit with cigarette holder, and never once says "quack." In fact, there is a sly reference to the cigarette holder in one scene, where it is explicitly and violently rejected. The makeup is ingenious and admirable in the technical sense, but probably a mistake in terms of letting DeVito do his thang. On the other hand, we now know that Danny DeVito is not limited to the same character, that he can act with great energy and vigor. It must have been an exhausting part to do.
Christopher Walken's Max Shreck is just your average megabusinessman with an agenda that includes vampirizing his entire society. The name Shreck, by the way, is a reference to the first great movie vampire, in NOSFERATU (1922). Walken even has the preternaturally young/old face of a good vampire. Like the others, Walken must struggle with Waters's script with its plot holes and thin characterization, but unlike the others he is not particularly interesting visually, so he doesn't get much help from Burton either. I did feel that the story about Shreck putting Penguin forward for mayor was Burton's comment on the willingness of people to find a strong man to solve their problems for them, regardless of what they may or may not know about him and was oddly relevant in this summer before Ross Perot opens his campaign for President.
I have to wonder why Waters got the script job. His track record is none too encouraging with credits like FORD FAIRLANE and HUDSON HAWK, if those can be called credits. The script is cluttered with stories, is cluttered with the kind of sexual jokes that amuse 6th-graders, and only vaguely motivated actions. Cause and effect do not count for much in Tim Burton's universe so he probably didn't notice. But for those of us who are still oppressed by the laws of physics and such, we have to surrender to the moment and not mind, however much we would prefer it to be otherwise.
I enjoyed myself enormously and recommend BATMAN RETURNS to you, but you might as well pay matinee prices. This movie is going to make a bundle anyway and you, like me, will want to go a second time to drink in its visual density.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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