Batman Returns really isn't like any other superhero movie in the subgenre, for good and for ill. If other 90's superhero movies (like the two Batman movies that followed this one) were primarily interested in selling toys and other pieces of merchandise, Batman Returns is a movie as informed by BDSM culture and creepy violence as it is by Bob Kane and Bill Finger comic book characters it's based upon. That makes for some really bizarre individual sequences even if Batman Returns as a whole movie kinda just crumbles apart as a whole despite some top-notch production design and cinematography.
The city of Gotham City is captivated by the sudden appearance of The Penguin (Danny DeVito), a physically deformed man who's been living in the sewers of the city for his entire life. Though the denizens of Gotham treat him as a misunderstood underdog, Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) believes there's something sinister going on with this Penguin. Turns out, there is, as Penguin has blackmailed local industry titan Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) into being his partner in helping him assimilate to the human world, with Shreck coming up with a ploy to have The Penguin run for mayor so that the head political figure of the city will be directly connected and help Max cover up any of his unsavory acts.
Amidst all of this, there's all the matter of...Catwoman (Michelle Pfieffer), AKA Selina Kyle, a previously timid secretary who was thrown out a window by Max Shreck but came back to life as a super sexual crime fighter, one with some vengeance to dish out on Max Schreck. Intertwined in all of this is Batman, Bruce Wayne's crime-fighting alter-ego who has not much to do in his own movie besides reacting to the insanity The Penguin and Catwoman dish out. And when I say insanity, I do mean that, the stuff these two, especially The Penguin, get into in the course of the running time of Batman Returns is pretty dang out there for an American blockbuster and I'm still mystified director Tim Burton managed to get it all in here.
While a number of modern day superhero movies like Batman v. Superman and Fant4stic go for a downbeat dour tone, Batman Returns actually has lively attitude to the gruesome mayhem it dishes out, with the only exception being an attempted rape (just the situation I've always wished was in more movies about a superhero created for six-year-olds) in an alleyway that Catwoman thwarts that's framed in a darker manner. Otherwise, Tim Burton shoots certain moments like The Penguin creepily groping a woman's breast or biting a dude's nose off or Batman setting a dude on fire with his Batmobile's back engine in camerawork that allows the audience to see clearly the bedlam before You can tell Burton is getting giddy off the idea of audiences everywhere being repulsed by what he's shot in such a cogent manner.
Are these isolated moments of crudeness that push the boundaries beyond what's typically expected of superhero movies actually good or are they just sort of weird shock value? I'm inclined to go with the latter since these bizarre moments don't add up to all that much in the entire movie, which tosses aside the adult content when it tries to have a more conventional superhero movie third act that just goes on forever and ever, though at least that third act delivers the delightfully odd sight of penguins with rockets and an Emperor Penguin funeral played entirely straight-faced. I admire the audacity in Daniel Walters screenplay in trying to be so much more adult than usual superhero fare but it all kinda just ends up feeling like a four-year-old showing off some swear words he just learned to his grown-up relatives at a family gathering.
The best part of some of those weirder moments is that it allows Danny DeVito the chance to go whole-hog in his performance, which has him chewing up the scenery and then some in a delightfully off-the-wall turn. Michelle Pfieffer is similarly in rare form as Catwoman as she seems to be relishing the opportunity to deliver every double entendre-laced piece of dialogue as memorably as she possibly can. These two turn out to be the best performances in the entire movie, though, by contrast, Michael Keaton gets very little to do here as this movies poorly written take on Batman convinced me the Michael Keaton Batman may be one of the worst live-action movie Batmen despite having a great actor like Keaton playing the character.
It's the darn costume that really ruins this interpretation of Batman for me, his inability to move his neck already removes the menace from the character while the few actual movements that Keaton is able to do while wearing the lumbering Batman costume are stiff and, even in a movie this heavily stylized, just don't work one bit. I actually like the dual identity romance played out between Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne (Keaton is so great as Bruce Wayne it makes the terrible version of Batman he's stuck in all the more tragic) and wish that got more screentime since Keaton and Pfieffer have a chemistry in their scenes together as their "normal" alter-egos that channels the best film noir romances which were also built on a bedrock of deceit and sensual tension. That's another element in the diverting and well-shot (the cinematography by Stefan Czapsky really is excellent) but overall lacking Batman Returns that shows serious promise but fails to come together properly.
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