Batman Forever

Salerno wrote:

I woke up this morning and felt like watching this. It's been probably 12 years since I've seen it last. Shadowed by Schumacher hating and Nolan's grittier and more dramatic take on the character, I assumed that my brain just craved some nostalgia.

However, this is a really bizarre and wonderful film.

There were tons of little visual touches that 8 year old me never noticed. For example, notice how the circular yellow, red and black pattern on the circus floor is a visual link to both the bomb and the neon eye sign that Two Face flies the helicopter through at the beginning. And then there's the parallel of Dick's family dying by falling from a great height towards concentric circles on the ground and him watching Two Face die by falling from a great height towards a circular floor. Considering that a main element of the story is psychology and dreams, I would like to think that some of these parallels were purposeful.   [ show more ]

Grievences with the screenplay or the campy treatment of the character aside (although I think some of the psychological discussions and theme of split personalities are craftfully woven in), Batman Forever is a truly visual film that elevates the story with what we are seeing as opposed to simply with what we hear characters say, as is the case with most films.

And how about all the sexual innuendos? Chase makes very blatant references to BDSM (disguised as a reference to Catwoman) and we sense that Bruce takes a certain kind of pleasure in playing both of her lovers. He is simultaneously the bad boy and the good boy (more references to split personalities).

I cannot finish this review without mentioning Jim Carrey, who was the main draw for me to this when I was a boy. I worshipped him in this film and in Ace Ventura as a child, impersonating him all the time. A performance this animated and cartoonish takes just as much control as an actor as does a "serious" one.

If you haven't watched this movie in a while or have written it off as the beginning of the decline of the Batman franchise until Nolan resurrected it, I urge you to give it another chance and try to think of it as a standalone film and be less concerned as to where it fits in the continuity of the rest of the Batman universe. Batman Forever is a standalone picture. Just as Tim Burton was not afraid to give us a version of Batman we weren't familiar with, Schumacher also does not shy away from weaving challenging and mature themes into his Batman. [ show less ]

Link_Tristan wrote on IMDB:

Tim Burton got good actors to star in the first two Batman films, but Joel figured that he'd just use the Batman ploy to get as many top-quality actors as he could so that Nicole Kidman and Val Kilmer could say: "Hey! I was in a Batman film! Shows you what a great actor I am!" He also used Burton's ploy from 'Batman Returns' of using two villains at once. Personally, I wonder why he would want to use two villains when he can barely get one character right.

Don't get me wrong, Nicole and Val have been great in other performances like Moulin Rouge and Tombstone, but Joel is simply incapable of getting any good performances out of his actors. This is probably the worst I've ever seen Nicole. Don't believe me? There's a scene where she tells Batman to meet her at her place at midnight. Even though she's expecting company, she decides to sleep in the nude before he shows up. I can understand her character trying to seduce Batman, but you don't go to bed and fall asleep while you're expecting company. Hell, just listen to her character's inner conflict when she says "I can't believe it. I've imagined this moment since I first saw you... And now I have you and.... Guess a girl has to grow up sometime." I guess I can't blame Nicole on doing the best with the crap she was given. Someone needs to fire Mr. Script Writer.   [ show more ]

Joel turned Harvey TwoFace, a maniacal mad-man into a laughing idiot that hops up and down whenever he blows something up. And whereas Burton took time in his films to explain the villain's transformation (Joker, Catwoman, Penguin, they all have great scenes explaining why they're evil) they just did a quick twenty second explanation of how the lawyer Harvey got acid thrown on him during a trial, so he swore revenge on Batman... what? For the record, I have to say that Two-Face is pretty much Tommy Lee Jones copying Jack Nicholson's performance as the Joker with different makeup, and the Riddler wasn't too far behind in persona, Jim Carrey was acting like... well... Jim Carrey. As "good" as Carrey's performance might be, there's really no room for non-sequitur dance sequences and goofy voices to be thrown into the middle of a scene-- but that's what Jim is good at doing, I guess. As for Edward Nigma, they briefly went into how he became the Ridler (he was fired from his job, I know that tends to make people become super-villains), but never explained why he likes making riddles. His plot: become the smartest man alive by reading the minds of Gotham's citizens and then... and then... uh... aw hell, it doesn't matter because we all know Batman will save the day.

Don't forget Robin, the most hated side-kick in the world (I say that because in the comic book he was overwhelmingly voted to be killed off). Let's introduce this guy who wants revenge on TwoFace and offers absolutely nothing else significant to the story. He's just eye-candy to let the ladies (and Joel) swoon over in the action film. But then again, most male actors in Joel's movies are pretty much like that.

The biggest crime in Gotham was how Joel rebuilt the city. He demolished Burton's Gothic atmosphere and added colored lights and large bronze statues to turn the desolate wasteland of a city into a sparkling Las Vegas wonderland. He also introduced the phosperhous gang, a group of guys who glow in the dark and play heavy metal music... wait-- that wasn't in the comic book? I'll never forgive him for giving Batman rubber nipples.

I've heard some arguments standing up on Joel's defense, claiming that the movie would've been better with the deleted scenes put back in. Namely, two scenes: one which shows TwoFace escaping from Arkham, writing some sort of anti-Bat message in a victim's blood, and other scene where Bruce gets amnesia and has to remember why he's Batman. The first scene was supposedly cut for being too scary for kids, but I can safely say that it was filmed and edited to fit into the rest of this crap fest perfectly. And the amnesia scene was utter crap. Honestly: AMNESIA. As if a bullet grazing Bruce's forehead and causing amnesia isn't far fetched enough, how about the fact that he cures it in under five minutes? That scene wasn't cut for being too dark, or too slow, it was cut for being too stupid.

Could be worse though... you could be watching the next installment "Batman and Robin." At least the plot for Batman Forever wasn't as poorly juggled as that movie. The worst you get with this movie is a bunch of clichés, poor acting direction, unbelievable (not in a good way, unbelievable as in "why would only thirty or so members of the circus audience slowly form a circle to look at the only casualties in this scene?") moments, and basically undoing everything dark and dramatic that made the first two films good so it can be spat up as this kind of campy, kid-friendly movie that anyone with a brain would tell is just a cheap knock off of the first two Batman films. [ show less ]

Lee Eisenberg (eisenberg.lee@gmail.com) wrote on IMDB:

Some people talk about "the stick of straw that broke the camel's back", meaning when something reached the tipping point. So when did the Batman franchise go bad? Well, "Batman Forever" was getting silly, but it still had Jim Carrey to steal the show as The Riddler ("Batman and Robin" had about as many good qualities as a barrel of toxic waste). Personally, I don't know why they had to have Batman (Val Kilmer) going through therapy; remove that and he still would have been a cool superhero with neat gadgets. Tommy Lee Jones wasn't bad as Two-Face. Nicole Kidman and Chris O'Donnell, as Dr. Chase Meridian and Robin, respectively, didn't really add anything.

Overall, the point is that when Joel Schumacher took over directing, the franchise went downhill. Part of the problem was that while Tim Burton created an eerie Gotham City that looked like New York in the 1940s, Joel Schumacher created a Gotham City that looked like it was trying too hard to be "Blade Runner".   [ show more ]

So, the franchise starting getting stale with this one, but Jim Carrey kept the movie from being unwatchable. As Edward Nygma, one of Bruce Wayne's employees, he had some great lines. In the movie, Nygma proposes a device that rests atop TV sets and reads peoples' minds, but Wayne rejects it, considering it too dangerous. Thus, Nygma becomes The Riddler, and he's the best character in the movie. [ show less ]