by Max Scheinin Read more of Max's reviews at http://www.garfieldlib.com/yanews/july97/max/max.html
In 1989, Tim Burton took the legendary comic book figure of Batman and turned him into a huge box office hit with an atmospheric little film that created an utterly distinct feeling somewhere between film noir and The Godfather. Was it "deep"? Nope. However it was a perfect entertainment and the audience ate it up. It was natural that Roger Ebert trashed it writing that it was "without the comic book uplift" of the Indiana Jones and Superman pictures. Which was true. If what you were looking for was the tale of a heroic man's escadapes and adventures you were looking in the wrong place. If those films were Tom Sawyer, then Batman was Huckleberry Finn. Some critics ( Glenn Lovell of The San Jose Mercury News and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone ) realized that it was something special; Mr. Lovell gave it ***1/2 and wrote that "This is Batman as Batman should be."; Mr. Travers called it one of the ten best films of the year. The praise was deserved - from start to finish the film was enthralling, exciting, and superb in every respect. There was no doubt that there would be a sequel directed by Burton.
The result was Batman Returns which forgets that it wants to be fun within the first five minutes. The villains ( the hideous Penguin and seductive Catwoman ) take over, and our epectations are always left unfulfilled - when we wanted the Penguin to bite off Batman's nose he simply gets mad, and when we want Catwoman to slither over Batman's body she gets pushed off a building. I admire Mr. Burton for trying to do more then entertain, but the result is a mess. Nothing works out as planned - it fails both to entertain and to enlighten. Hints are made to the audience that this film could be a blast. Alas, these are only hints. There are, don't misunderstand me, several moments of cinematic genuis contained; Catwoman and Batman understand eachother perfectly without a word on the subject being said; Christopher Lloyd is trapped, by the Penguin, within a giant cage; a small basket is dropped into a large river; but nothing is drawn together and Burton is unable to make the film work on any regular basis. A weak followup, both career and sequel wise, Batman Returns is sometimes dazzling, but to often dissapointing.
Grade: D+
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