BATMAN FOREVER
A film review by Lewis Butler
Copyright 1995 Lewis Butler
The most remarkable difference in BATMAN RETURNS is the lack of a good director. Schumacher creates a movie that is choppy, hard to follow, and has some of the worst directed action sequences in recent memory. The movie has some neat gizmos and gadgets, too bad we don't get to see how they work, or even exactly what the are doing. There is one scene in particular where Batman manages to escape certain death by doing something involving his feet and fire. I have no idea what happened in this segment, and neither did anyone else in the audience.
The casting is good. Carey delivers a wonderfully wacky psycho portrayal of The Riddler, and Tommy Lee Jones is passable as Two-Face, although his character doesn't get the development that Carey's does.
Nicole Kidman is as bad as Kim Bassinger was in the first movie. A completely unbelievable female character, again. Too bad, I like Nicole Kidman (ever since FLIRTING). I will say, all traces of her accent are gone; she has a perfect American accent throughout the film. But she's not believable in any way, and there is no depth to her character.
Val Kilmer was not particularly impressive either. Somehow his Bruce Wayne lacked that edge of craziness that was the one thing Michael Keaton did well. Kilmer's Wayne is stoic and dull. There's none of the interesting little quirks that were evident as far back as TOP SECRET! and REAL GENIUS.
Chris O'Donnell manages to make Robin an actually interesting character. Not that he's given a lot of opportunities. He does manage to make Robin a believable character Something the comic books never did. I did like the inclusion of "Nightwing" among the possible nicknames, though. Nice touch.
The sets are quite poor, often involving shots that scream "MATTE!" in large capitals. There are also some strange instances where one feels as if the director is setting off beacons and showing off how he too can be clever. All the uneasy mood of Tim Burton is exchanged for cheap flash and poor editting.
If one rates BATMAN at a +3, BATMAN RETURNS was a nice +2. BATMAN FOREVER drops the stakes considerably, weighing in at a mere +0.0 on the -4 to +4 scale (where 0 indicates an average movie)
kreme@netcom.com
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