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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Frosty Foes and Stem Fatales

Blu Review: BATMAN & ROBIN
PG – 128mins – 1997
Written by: Akiva Goldsman
Based on the characters created by: Bob Kane
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell, Uma Thurman, Alica Silverstone, Michael Gough, Pat Hingle, Elle Macpherson, John Glover, Jeep Swenson
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Inspired by fellow movie review blogger Andy Buckle’s recent “Worst Film of All Time” post, in which 1997’s much maligned Batman & Robin claimed the dubious honour of pole position (check out the article HERE and why not stay for a nose around?), I decided it was high time I unwrapped the cellophane from my dust-collecting Blu-ray copy and gave the film which temporarily derailed the Bat-chise a belated re-watch.

I can remember seeing the film on the big screen when it was first released some 14 years ago and I must have enjoyed it (hey, I was only 13!) as I asked a relative to buy it for me – along with the rest of the series – on VHS that Christmas. I only re-bought personal favourite Batman Returns on DVD, but when I upgraded to Blu-ray, all four (and later six) live action Bat-flicks were high on my list of hi-def purchases. I can’t even claim that this clunker was a redundant disc within a box set: I purchased them all separately!

To give the Joel Schumacher-helmed flop its dues; it does look mighty fine in HD – but then the neon-hued megalithic Gotham sets are impressively vibrant creations; Tim Burton’s towering and intimidating gothic designs exaggerated to the verge of hyperbole. That, essentially, is Batman & Robin’s downfall: it is everything that worked in restrained measures in previous instalments ramped up to embarrassingly uninhibited levels.

Main adversary Mr Freeze (Schwarzenegger; granted top billing above the eponymous rodent), for example, isn’t just an eccentric villain with a score to settle, replete with a distinctive disguise and a sardonic sense of humour, oh no: he’s a flat out caricature of a maniacal madman with a clunky metallic suit, blue skin and an inability to speak without spouting the cheesiest ice-based puns known to man (“Ice to see you”, “You’re not sending me to the cooler”, “What killed the dinosaurs? The Ice Age!” – I could go on!).

Back in 1997, adult Bat-fans desperate for a new live action adventure were stunned into fury as they were pelted with over two hours of the naffest and least humorous “gags” this side of a farce – even the usually sombre protagonist (played awkwardly – for the first and last time – by ER heart-throb du jour Clooney) wasn’t immune to woeful wisecracks (“This is why Superman works alone”) and corny sight gags (the Bat-card, the rubber nipples) which pandered to a child’s mentality and left the hardcore legions out in the cold (oh god – now *I’m* doing it!).

If you were to look on Batman & Robin as a kid’s flick; it’s a madcap success, fusing the bright, the bold and the wacky into a comic-book world where mad scientists all look like Albert Einstein and dangerous chemicals come in vats with “VENOM” and a skull and cross bones printed on the front. That’s probably why I liked it at 13, but this is not what audiences were expecting – or wanting – from the tortured and tragic caped crusader who doesn’t have any super-powers but is impelled on the righteous path by brute vengeance.

If you go in prepared, it’s not *that* deplorable. Sure, it desecrates all over Tim Burton’s dark, stylised and unquestionably superior earlier instalments, but the fact that it is so unrelentingly frenzied does, in a way, make the madness more bearable: Batman & Robin knows it’s a tongue-in-cheek cartoon and it doesn’t even attempt to be anything else. Ultimate proof comes when O’Donnell’s Dick Grayson saves Silverstone’s Barbara Wilson from plummeting to her death after a superfluous high-rise motorbike race goes awry. The first words out of his mouth as they dangle perilously over the precipice? “So *this* is where you hang out?” Groan.

In the films defence, Akiva The Da Vinci Code Goldsman’s spirited plot is anything but lazy, endowing each member of the bulbous cast with a purpose and arc. Freeze wants to cure his cryogenically frozen bride from MacGregor’s syndrome, while an eco-friendly agenda blossoms behind Poison Ivy’s (Thurman; suitably sultry) green-fingered wrath. Ever loyal butler Alfred (Gough), meanwhile, is hiding his pain behind a staunch façade and his joy at being reunited with his secretly rebellious niece, while loathed sidekick Robin is sick and tired of living in the shadow of the Bat.

There’s certainly a lot going on for these people, yet still every shot is crammed to the hilt with blindingly effervescent lighting, grandiose buildings, pimped-up rides and an arsenal of Bat-toys which (handily) can foil anything Freeze and Ivy throw at the rubber-suited heroes (a heat ray to thaw ice? Check. Ice skates built into your boots? Check! Artificial lips to repel poison kisses? CHECK!). This optical assault is much to the detriment of any emotional narrative undertones, as even the most heart-wrenching drama (such as a dying Alfred’s reflections on a life serving the Wayne dynasty) is eclipsed by the bombastic and the ridiculous.


In a CR@B Shell: Viewed as a Saturday morning ‘toon for the under tens, Batman & Robin flies high as a cavalcade of camp comic book lunacy, but sat alongside Tim Burton’s dark knight-mares it’s a bat-shit, bird-brained embarrassment to the franchise which rightfully got sent straight to the cooler. Thank Gotham for Christopher Nolan!
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