This device is not exactly an Internet provider. It works by sucking up the brainwaves of its users, transferring them to the Riddler, whose own I.Q. expands at dizzying speed.
Although the first two Batman movies were big winners at the box office, there was a feeling after "Batman Returns" (1992) that the series had grown too dark and gloomy. Batman was a reclusive neurotic, his enemies included the deformed Penguin (raised from childhood in sewers), and the movies tried for a marriage of superheroes and film noir. That didn't work: The message of noir is that there are no heroes.
TimBurton, director of the first two brooding Batman films, steps up to producer for "Batman Forever," and the new director, Joel Schumacher, makes a generally successful effort to lighten the material. There are more clever one-liners for Alfred the butler (Michael Gough), lots of laughs for theRiddler (played by Jim Carrey like a riff on his character in "TheMask"), and even sitcom moments like the one when Alfred tells Bruce Wayne that the "young master" has run off with the car. "TheJaguar?" asks Wayne. "No, sir. The other car." The movie looks great, of course; Gotham City is a web of towering spires, bridges and expressways, planted in a swamp of despond. Boardrooms and laboratories look like German Expressionist sets, and the charity circus could come straight from Murnau's "Sunrise." There are neat gimmicks, like the Riddler's brain-wave helmet, and neat stunts, as when the Batmobile climbs straight up the side of a skyscraper. And there is a consistent visual motif: two hands clasping in a firm grip. Dick Grayson is caught in such a grip by his acrobat father during a dangerous trick, and later the shot is repeated to show thatBruce Wayne is now his surrogate father.
But somehow Batman still doesn't come alive. Val Kilmer is a completely acceptable substitute for Michael Keaton in the title role, but in all three of the movies, Batman remains shadowy and undefined. The movies exist for their villains, who this time both seem to be playing the same note; the Riddler and Two-Face alternate in overacting, until the pace grows wearying. There is no rhythm to the movie, no ebb and flow; it's all flat-out spectacle.
Is the movie better entertainment? Well, it's great bubble gum for the eyes. And younger children will be able to process it more easily (some kids were led bawling from "Batman Returns," where the PG-13 rating was a joke).
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