Entertaining, but far too much focus on spectacle over content

Rating: Null/10 (28 January 2002)

Evil land developer Max Shreck teams up with sewer dweller The Penguin to plan to take over large areas of real estate. When Shreck's employee Selina Kyle discovers his plans he kills her, only for her to survive and develop Catwoman as an alter-ego. Gotham City's regular defender Batman, steps up to battle the villains while, as Bruce Wayne, he begins a romance with the sexually charged Kyle.
The second of the Batman series had the possibility to go one of two ways. 1 - it could go darker and look at the character of Batman in more detail and bring out the ambiguous nature of him more. Or 2 - it could take the blockbuster elements of the first and up the ante. With Burton on board it was always possible that it would go darker and complex than the first, however instead it panders to the mass audience. In fairness the studios had a lot of money to make from the films and merchandising so couldn't risk the sequel turning people off. So here we have a plot that doesn't really matter. At times it's not really clear why any of the villains are doing what they're doing, the thinnest of reasons suffice - the Penguin simply wants revenge for being dumped in the sewers at birth.
With the plot noted on a matchbox, Burton seems happy to concentrate on the set pieces. With the characters set up in the first film, he now can just jump in at the deep end. The end result is a endless run of explosions, gadgets and fights. Keaton is not so effective as he was in the first - mainly because his character isn't developed because we concentrate on the baddies instead. De Vito is a good Penguin and he doesn't ham as much as Nicholson did. Pfeiffer is definitely a better female role than Basinger was, but she isn't fully explored. Walken is always watchable as a bad guy, but here he can't rise above the material.
Overall this film bottled the opportunity to build on the dark original. Going for the `bang, bang, boom' audience it throws all it's energy into action and fights. Overall it's an uncoordinated mess - the name Batman deserved better.