Friday 27 July 2012

Review: Batman Forever (1995, Dir.Joel Schumacher)












After Tim Burton's (let's just say) overly auteuristic take on the legends of the caped crusader in Batman Returns didn't fuel the kind of box office numbers and merchandising opportunities that Warner Bros would have obviously wanted, it was inevitable that the studios would go back to the drawing board for Batman Forever. New Batman (Keaton out Val Kilmer in), new director(Burton out Joel Schumacher in), new composer (Elfman out Elliot Goldenthal in) and most importantly of all, new tone(Gothic out, Neon in). Despite these changes it should be noted that Burton's influence is here in some very minor capacity (for the final time in the franchise) though its obvious that the final product is as far removed from any vision that Burton would have had that its barely worth him having the Producer credit at all. Reportedly there is a "lost" extended cut of the film out there, parts of which can be found in promotional music videos and trailers for the film, which offers a much darker version of the story, whilst also helping to explain some of the more out of place and often toyetic scenes in the theatrical cut.

That remains hidden though so for now we're stuck with the theatrical cut of the movie which is just frankly not very good. And I'm not saying that it's terrible, just simply not very good. It just feels really disjointed both from an editing point of view and tonally. Its tongue in cheek moments are played too seriously and it's dark moments are shot too colourfully. It doesn't help that Gotham itself is utterly bland and lacking in character itself. Gone is the deco/expressionist architecture which created the world for Burton's characters, instead being replaced by some very shoddy looking CG buildings which lack any interesting attributes. Absent too is the misty, moody and dirty aura that drenches the scenes of the previous two films, instead being replaced by jarring neon lights covering well, just about everything. Everything just ends up looking too clean and uninhabited - not really Gotham City at all.

I hear a lot of people say they really rate Jim Carrey as The Riddler in this film, but this is just people from the general populace as opposed to people who's opinions I actually value. I love Jim Carrey don't get me wrong and I think he takes on the character his own way using his own personality traits to his benefit much the same way that Jack Nicholson did with the Joker. Catching that lightning in a bottle again though proved too much and as an interpretation of The Riddler character it just doesn't work for me. The wacky antics of the character and really rather rubbish riddles just make it hard to believe in him as a credible foe even to Kilmer's unenthused looking Batman. Still, as I said, I consistently have people trying to tell me they love Carrey in the role so obviously something here worked in the eyes of a lot of people (just not mine).


Tommy Lee Jones is equally as dumb and unimposing as the poorly translated to screen and horribly fleshed out Two-Face - notably in place of Billy Dee Williams who played Harvey Dent in Batman '89 and was contracted to reprise the role in a subsequent film in the franchise. His small part in Returns - where he was to be shocked by Catwoman and transformed into Two-Face in the finale - was re-written for Christopher Walken's character, and when it came to Batman Forever Joel Schumacher ousted Williams in favour of Jones (in return for a handsome pay off). Strange in that Jones never really seems invested in the character at all, but I guess it was just another step in separating the film just enough from its predecessors.


Batman's long standing sidekick Robin finally makes his debut in the series(again after being shafted out of the Returns script) played by Chris O'Donnell who seems to enjoy playing the character, but never really embodies the Robin we know. That was always going to be an uphill struggle with that naff earring in though - a poor effort to make the character seem hip and somehow relateable to younger audiences, but now serving only to date the film more than the terrible CG could ever hope to. The saving grace here really is that Christian Bale would thankfully fail in his audition to be cast in the role so he could go on to become Batman a few years down the line.

In all fairness, knocking the performances here feels like cheap and easy prey as they're just set up to fail from the get go thanks to the absolutely dreadful script which was obviously rewritten to death by so many scribes over the years that any semblance to the characters we hold dear are just scrubbed away and moulded into whatever ridiculous caricatures they need to be to fit the direction any particular scene wants to take regardless of the overall plot. Whilst Batman '89 finds the perfect middle ground between the darkness of Returns and the über-camp of Batman & Robin, it's curious that the instalment that is actually sandwiched between them manages to get it so, so wrong.

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