so near, and such a mess

Rating: Null/10 (2 June 1999)

Not so much a movie, more a series of photo opportunities. But what photos! This is a beautifully designed film, with some pretty decent performances, and a script that needed ditching and starting over; it has at once far too much and far too little plot, and Burton isn't the director to get over that. As a noirish Christmas movie (which was a good idea visually: it enables Gotham City to have a bit of white in it, while still retaining the requisite bleakness) it bears comparison with Burton's more personal "The Nightmare before Christmas", and there are points of contact with "Edward Scissorhands" too.
Rather than learn from this film's mistakes, the further sequels decided to make them again, only bigger (while introducing lots of really stupid ones of their own), by following "Returns"'s terrible miscalculation of having two virtually independent villains who have less and less to do with one another as the dÃ©nouement approaches. The film could have worked if only the last reel had drawn the plot strands together; instead, de Vito's (adequate) Penguin is resurrected simply for the sake of him falling over again for no good reason - this is dramatically unforgivable, and dissipates all the energies that have been generated by Keaton and Pfeiffer, who do some excellent work with pretty poor dialogue.