Beauty and the Freak

Blu Review: BATMAN RETURNS
15 – 126mins – 1992
Story by: Daniel Waters and Sam Hamm
Screenplay by: Daniel Waters
Based on the characters created by: Bob Kane
Directed by: Tim Burton
Starring: Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, Michael Gough, Michael Murphy, Cristi Conway, Andrew Bryniarski, Pat Hingle, Vincent Schiavell, Paul Reubens, Diana Salinger
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Regarded – for as long as memory serves – as my favourite of the six Batman motion pictures to date (yeah, I'd even go so far as to place it above Christopher Nolan's efforts), 1992's first sequel, Returns, did little to lessen my preference on a recent Blu-ray re-watch. The snow-steeped, washed out Gotham backdrop and Christmas setting perfectly juxtapose the pitch black plot which is so dark it's sinister – but nevertheless a Bat-load of macabre fun, too.

Favouring a gothic fairytale introduction for the film's iconic dual foes – deformed, sewer-raised “The Penguin” (DeVito) and murdered temptress “Catwoman” (Pfeiffer) – to a Batman-powered narrative, it is interesting to note that Bruce Wayne (Keaton) barely features in the opening 30minutes, merely watching from the sideline of his dank Batcave HQ as the concrete metropolis overhead is ambushed by corruption, madness and anarchy during a season of supposed goodwill.

Michael Beetlejuice Keaton, nevertheless, is superb in both lead roles, endowing the Dark Knight with steely menace while softening the resolve to a more humane (yet still astute) businessman when playing Bruce Wayne. He treds the line between reflective mourning and enterprising respect flawlessly.

It's hard to believe that a woman as attractive as Michelle Pfeiffer could be so meek and malleable as downtrodden plain Jane secretary Selina Kyle, but she's every inch the feisty bitch as the resurrected leather-clad revolutionary. Christopher Walken, as her shameless and sinful boss Max Schreck, is an off the wall pantomime villain as the silver-haired manipulative schemer who the public blindly believes to be a saviour to their city. It's refreshing to see a comic book film depict a “real world” miscreant who doesn't don a disguise to carry out his underhand bidding.

But the star of the show, unquestionably, is Danny DeVito who truly is orphaned mutant Oswald Cobblepot. Thanks to some ingenious make up design which accentuates his shallow eyes, beaked nose, squat, waddling form and flippered limbs he really is a slimy, grotesque creation who gets under your skin – none more so than when he holds a pitying Gotham in the palm of his flipper and is persuaded by Max to run for Mayor. The scene in which he jumps a sycophantic do-gooder and bites his nose after feasting on a rotting fish is nauseatingly gleeful.

But despite wallowing in darkness, Tim Burton's eerie sequel is still intrinsically a comic book adaptation, albeit it one for an older audience than Joel Schumacher's latter goofiness (Batman Forever and Batman & Robin). The Penguin's kooky arsenal of dangerous umbrellas, his army of aquatic birds and circus misfits, the Batmobile's novel solution to dead-ends and Selina Kyle's supernatural personality transplant after being nibbled back to life by the animals who gave her more time than humanity ever did, are all testament to Returns' kooky cartoon quality which never falls into the trap of camp ridiculousness which eventually derailed the franchise.


In a CR@B Shell: The Dark Knight returns in a back seat role to his powerhouse enemies. But then the shadows are where Batman works best and his lack of screen time is in no way an indication of weakness. A trio of strong headliners, a leftfield maestro in Walken and a stylistically disorientating locale help lift this nihilistic scarytale into a rollicking and high-flying comic book cape-r.
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Riddle Me That

Blu Review: BATMAN FOREVER
12 – 121mins – 1995
Story by: Lee Batchler and Janet Scott-Batchler
Screenplay by: Lee Batchler, Janet Scott-Batchler and Akiva Goldsman
Based on the characters created by: Bob Kane and Bill Finger
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Starring: Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey, Nicole Kidman, Chris O’Donnell, Michael Gough, Pat Hingle, Drew Barrymore, Debi Mazar, Ed Begley Jnr.
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Congratulations to Ian Montgomery for deciphering the correct answer to my prior-posted riddle (reacquaint yourselves HERE); alas, I've no prize to give away except the pride for being right. The rather obvious answer was, of course, Batman Forever, and my microcosmic brain-teaser ushers in the second in my sporadic and unchronological blitz through Bat flicks old and new which I began last month with Batman & Robin (read my long-but-fair review HERE, if you dare!).

The second sequel to Tim Burton’s 1989 gothic big screen introduction, Forever is unofficially regarded as the beginning of the end of the first anthology of Bat-busters: Burton was reduced to producer and Joel Schumacher brought in as director because studio heads at Warner Bros. were concerned that 1992’s Returns was too dark and the mood needed lightening (a decision they thoroughly regretted some two years later when B&R’s dire reception lead to the canning of proposed fifth film Batman Triumphant).

Previous lead Michael Keaton (wisely) jumped ship and Val Kilmer was brought in – without reading the script in must be noted, leading to many an on-set conflict and the need to replace him for B&R – as the billionaire with a penchant for violent do-gooding. Despite playing Harvey Dent in Batman, Billy Dee Williams wasn’t even considered for the role of the disfigured D.A. “Two Face” here, the dubious honour instead going to Tommy Lee Jones. Michael Gough as butler Alfred and Pat Hingle as Commissioner Gordon returned as reassurance that we are still in the same diegetic universe.

Prior to my rewatching of Batman & Robin, I did actually attempt to watch Forever first, sticking on the disc one evening in the hope of rekindling my childhood love of the film. I say attempt because I didn’t even get beyond eccentric inventor Edward Nygma’s (Jim Carrey) brain-draining murder of his boss, Fred Stickley (Ed Begley Jnr.), before my irritation reached fever pitch and I turned it off. The juxtaposition between moody and mad just didn’t sit well with me – at least B&R knew it was camp frivolity and never attempted to be anything else, whereas I found Forever to be awkwardly stuck between darkness and lighthearted.

Last week, however, I prepared myself and made it all the way through. In fact, I re-evaluated my exasperation because I realised how ironically apt it is that a film which deals with a menagerie of duplicitous and delusional wack-jobs is indeed a schizophrenic beast itself. “Two Face” is the literal visualisation of this juxtaposition, but Edward Nygma is also a genius with an unpredictably psychotic alter ego in “The Riddler”, and Bruce Wayne himself is a respected businessman who plays vigilante superhero dressed as a giant Bat. It’s no wonder a psychologist (Kidman's Dr. Chase Meridian) is playing the love interest with all these dual natures running rampant!

Fans bemoaned the bringing in of orphan Dick Grayson, AKA. sidekick Robin (Chris O’Donnell) – particularly because O’Donnell was too old for the “Boy Wonder” role – but I think this was handled well, even if it could be argued that Batman works better alone and doesn’t need a kid to assist him! The circus-based murder of Dick’s family at the hands of “Two Face” nicely mirrored Bruce’s pain of watching his own parent’s being shot down, while dressing the Flying Grayson’s in the same garish outfit which the camp 60’s TV version of Robin donned was a neat little in-joke (so too the tongue-in-cheek line “Holey rusted metal, Batman!”).

While the age-old movie complaint of “How the hell could these people afford all this equipment, costumes and interior renovations?!” does diminish the believability of The Riddler’s elaborate plan to drain Gotham’s brain-power and harness it for himself using his hi-tech Nymatech headgear (seriously, the giant construction and climactic island locale just appeared out of nowhere, already constructed and fully operational), but a number of vast script alterations mid-production did cut the film from a bum-numbing 2hours 40mins to the 121minute mark, so it is likely that a lot of exposition was lost in the chop.

Whether Joel Schumacher’s fabled Director’s Cut (missing from this otherwise decently thorough Blu-ray set) would successfully smooth over the jolts in tone (quipping one liners one minute to mournful moody reflection the next) remains to be seen, but what we are left with isn’t a complete shambles, it just fails to hit the heights of Burton’s pitch-black predecessors while slowly ushering in the toyetic exuberance which temporarily killed off the franchise in a blaze of neon inanity.


In a CR@B Shell: Uneven and dualistic in tone, Batman Forever is neither spectacular nor unwatchable (provided you’re prepared for the change in direction), but it is often awkward in its uncertainty of how sinister or zany to be – a flaw which is just as much the studio’s fault as it is Schumacher’s.
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