BATMAN FOREVER (1995) ** Should have more accurately been entitled "The Curse of Batman" because: (1) Joel Schumacher dooms the film right off by clinging to producer Tim Burton's conception of Batman at the expense of all the visionaries who went before, and (2) one of the more interesting aspects of the film is the psycho-drama of being Batman, exposed in most interesting part by Nicole Kidman's shrink with a man-dressed-up-as-a-flying-rodent fetish. Interesting stuff, that, kind of, in a way. Now, what Schumacher/Burton does right is give us some really cool black light/translucent neon Batsets, updated gimmickry (if you must update the Batmobile this isn't bad, but the Bat Cave not so much), and action shots to make you lose your equilibrium, even sitting down. It's not a complete waste of film, it's an improvement on Burton's 1989 Batman , just not by enough. It's slightly more humorous, but more than incremental improvement is demanded. And the casting could hardly have been worse. I don't know if there is any role too difficult for Kidman to do something very right in, or any role so easy that she can master it, but here she goes in and out of character on a comic book psychiatrist. Val Kilmer's bland but allegedly heavy Batman has to tell you how much he's suffering, as no emotion ever registers, and is no improvement on Michael Keaton's Batdude. Both require rubber pec's to give them presence and I don't think you could walk down any block of Hollywood Boulevard any time of day without running into at least ten guys who'd do a better Batman. Tommy Lee Jones is unable to do anything with his arch-villain, which is so ridiculously drawn that only maybe Brando could have. So of all the principals, only Jim Carrey delivers consistently in any meaningful way on his character. And the meaningful ways he delivers is by updating The Riddler in a perversely impressive, absolutely unnecessarily nauseating manner exhibiting almost (almost) no redeeming qualities at all. Sadly wasted are the talented yin and yang of bad girls, Drew Barrymore as sugar and Debi Mazar as spice. C'mon Joel! You couldn't have worked them in a little bit more?! You didn't see nuthin' there?! I kind of like the idea of making Robin a little less dweebie and dorky, but Chris O'Donnell's street tough isn't quite right either. Schumacher always works some cool music into his flicks, and Offspring covering The Damned's "Smash It Up" is comic-book magnitude robust anarchy. Misguided but visually spectacular effort at presenting Batman as deep.as depicted by an actor who rarely depicts anything. No, Batman should be funny.
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