Review of Batman Forever (1995) by Javier F — 24 Sep 2013

Batman Forever has not aged quiet as well as the first two Tim Burton pictures, which are the work of a visionary auteur, versus the work of a studio which this is. It is a conflicted picture, on the one hand trying to move away from the low brow camp of the 1960s Batman, as a scene involving holey platforms would attest, by providing ever increasing elaborate, if not downright overwrought special effects, action sequences, and production design; on the other hand, fully reverting and embracing said camp by reducing all characters in the film to mere cartoon caricatures, something rammed in by the outlandish, albeit enjoyable performances of Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey as Two Face and The Riddler respectively.

Akiva Goldsman's repartee heavy screenplay tries to hard to be clever and fails badly, specially when it comes to Nicole Kidman's dialogue, which pretty much reduces her to a perennial bitch-in-heat.

Where Val Kilmer dons the suit well, he makes for an uninteresting Bruce Wayne, however Chris O'Donnell's Robin is handled very well, even finding a non-silly way to incorporate the well-known, garish red and yellow suit into the film.