Cinema: Justin Pearce
Batman Forever — the third film in the sequence that began with Tim Burton’s Batman — is a comic book of a movie. This fact would not need pointing out, but for the fact that the first two in the sequence weren’t comic book movies. They were graphic novel movies.
When Burton, a director associated with thoughtful fantasy rather than wham-bam-gasp blockbusters, took up the tale of the caped avenger and attracted stars of the calibre of Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer, it signalled that Batman had moved out of the realm of pulp. Not quite into the art house, perhaps, but into a market where university graduates were as well-represented as 10-year-olds.
This gamble with intellectual respectability wouldn’t have been worth the risk had it not been for the graphic novels of the late 1980s, which established caped heroes as a vehicle for philosophical mutterings and moral paradoxes. Burton’s films took their lead accordingly: Batman Returns oozed with dark throwaway lines, and Pfeiffer’s Catwoman positively begged to be turned into a post-Madonna feminist icon.
Batman Forever, produced by Burton but directed by Joel Schumacher, has no such pretentions. Where Batman had Jack Nicholson — an unlikely comedian — playing the Joker, Batman Forever finds its cackling baddie in Jim Carrey — an irritatingly likely comedian, and a better drawcard than Nicholson for the Coke-and-popcorn market. Where Batman Returns began with a lyrical prologue about how Danny de Vito’s Penguin came to be, Batman Forever plays in with the caped hero getting dressed, and manages to make this mundane activity look as action-packed as a TV ad for a new petrol additive.
The rest of the film is an ignominious collection of bangs, crashes, car chases and unmotivated sticky moments which are resolved by nothing other than the use of sheer batkrag. And it’s populated by a cast of B-movie predictables.
The female sex object role is filled by blonde beauty queen Dr Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman) who happens to be a psychologist. (Why is it that whenever women in action movies aren’t totally dumb they have to be psychologists? So they can help themselves through the cognitive dissonance of being blonde and brainy, perhaps? Whatever, feminist icon is not likely to be a career option for Dr Meridian.)
Robin (Chris O’Donnell) doubles up in the roles of male sex object and alienated youth who grows up and learns to forgive, thus running the risk of becoming a role
As for the villains, Carrey as the Riddler delivers about half his trademark repertoire of funny faces. Twoface (Tommy Lee Jones), who could have been one of the most interesting bat-foes of them all, here suffers from a severe case of scriptwriter neglect — most of the time he might as well not be there at all.
If this movie had been even reasonably well scripted, it might have served as a sweetener for anyone who found the first two Batman films insufferably pretentious — and who wanted a comic book movie. The problem is this is a bad comic book movie, and all it does is prove that you may get away with one sequel but you can’t get away with two. They really ought to have called this one Batman III. At least then people would have been warned.