Every week from now untilThe Batmanhits theaters, we’re watching Batman’s theatrical films in chronological order.
This week: A trip to the circus.
Last week:Selina Kyle and Andrea Beaumont deal with difficult men.
‘Batman Forever’ stars Val Kilmer and Nicole Kidman.Warner Bros. Pictures/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
See you next Waynesday, when Alfred’s niece shows up.
CallingBatman Returnsthe best Batman movie is not a very interesting opinion.
It’s what I believe, but I also used to thinkThe Dark Knightwas the best.
Nicole Kidman in ‘Batman Forever’.Warner Bros.
Those are two flavors of conventional favorite cult oddity, popular sensation which doesn’t make loving them wrong.
But loving 1995’sBatman Foreveris a very interesting opinion, becauseBatman Foreveris a superhero movie about sex.
Unabashed, indulgent, sexually sexy sex.
Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey in ‘Batman Forever’.Everett Collection
You cannot defend it intellectually, unless your brain lives below your utility belt.
The characters are too empty for romance, but not every relationship is a love story.
Later, the camera lingers on the Bat-butt long enough for a rubber-cheek jiggle.
The Bat-nipples got the press, and don’t forget howNicole Kidmanwhisper-moans “Ohh!”
while she caresses the Bat-pecs aroundVal Kilmer’s Bat-nipples.
Kidman plays Chase Meridian, a brilliant psychologist with a luxury-hotel name whose internal conflict requires an impossible decision.
Bruce Wayne or Batman: Which hot hunka man will she boff?
She meets the Caped Crusader at a standoff with Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones).
When the hero flies down from the sky, she responds: “Hot entrance.
Who has ever, ever, ever said that?
He’s read her work, and thinks it has minor merit.
“Insightful,” he says.
“Naive but insightful.”
Chase is a criminal psychologist because, as she explains, she really likes bad boys.
Give the late directorJoel Schumachersome credit.
His camera’s eye wanders.
Edward Nygma (Jim Carrey) is initially a dorky Wayne Enterprises scientist with multiple Bruce Wayne pin-up walls.
His obsession could read as jilted fandom, but Carrey kinks up his skin-tight Riddler.
In Carrey’s best scene, Nygma pretends tobeBruce Wayne, complete with a phony Kilmer mole.
That’s an unexplored swirl of narcissistic infatuation:Single White Bat-Male.
When the Riddler blows up the Bat-cave, he screeches things like “Spank me!”
and “Joygasm!”
Consider this lair penetrated.
Meanwhile, Drew Barrymore and Debi Mazar play characters who might as well be named Breast and Leg.
“It’s the car, right?”
“Chicks love the car.”
“I have yet to find out what the bad part of that is.”
Schumacher’s cheeky hedonism madehim a great interview.
His stock will keep rising, because contemporary blockbuster directors are such dutiful bores.
He runs off to fight more thugs.
There’s an energetic cut back to Chase, watching him with voracious awe.
Kilmer looks so bored and so handsome, which could be authorial intent.
Jaw, lips, terrific: What more do you need?
to sustain 90 minutes of fun.
Unfortunately, it’s a two-hour movie with two other main characters who are just awful.
Jones turns both sides of Two-Face into a limp wannabe Joker.
O’Donnell looks like a very nice camp counselor doing a James Dean impression.
(He also does martial arts laundry.)
Dick and Bruce spend the movie having the same conversation:Don’t kill Two-Face!
But I wanna!Much of Carrey’s dialogue sounds like failed catchphrases.
These are not mysterious Bruce Wayne memories!
These are the Bruce Wayne memories that Estonian 3-year-olds know about!
Two-Face’s whole role is to barge into scenes with a machine gun.
Too much of the production design is the same vomitous shade of Syndicated TV Pilot green.
Points for prophecy, but the script forgets the very fun notion of Riddler as a brain-absorbing personality parasite.
There’s a sense that the big money is taking over.
This Bruce has a fleet of motorcycles for Dick to ogle over (a 1917 Harley!
A Vincent Black Knight!)
and Master Wayne can’t figure out if his ward stole his Jaguar or his Bentley.
The product placement can be palpable, and Kilmer’s very first lineturned into a McDonald’s ad.
I don’t think kitsch was ever really a problem for Batman.
The bigger issue was the character’s expanding importance to his parent company’s financial bottom line.
His stories get bigger with wallet size, inevitably too big.
Joker and Penguin terrorized city blocks.
Phantasm was, like, killing a few gangsters.
Now Riddler is mind-robbing half of Gotham.
Story gravity is carrying us away from personal intimacy and stylistic eccentricity.
