Batman, and Catwoman Are Up To Par, but the Pitiful Penguin Ruins The Sequel

Rating: 6/10 (22 March 2006)

Batman Returns is the 1992 sequel to the original 1989 Batman movie. Most of the original cast returns, and Batman faces two new- but familiar foes. The Penguin played by Danny DeVito, and the Catwoman played by Michelle Pfeiffer emerge to wreck havoc upon Gotham City and cause Batman even more problems.
The movie is not the blockbuster that the first film was, and is too grotesque and gloomy to be appreciated by young children. This is a cold, dark film, filled with pity and shame.
The movie opens with the wealthy parents of a deformed baby, putting him into a baby carriage, and dropping him into the Gotham River on a cold winter evening. They don't care if their baby lives or dies or gets devoured by wild animals. The baby floats downstream into the city's sewers, where he is rescued and raised by penguins. Thirty-three years late,r the baby emerges out of the sewers fully grown, with an arched back, a deformed nose, and claws. Going by the name Oswald Cobblepot, the pitiful creature has only one goal in life, to discover who his parents were, and find out why they dumped him like garbage.
Cobblepot, later in the movie, becomes vengeful at the citizens of Gotham City for living the fulfilled lives that he had been cheated out of. As Cobblepot emerges from the sewers, newspaper stories circulate about the mysterious penguin-man threatening Gotham City. Oswald is outraged at the fear and scorn he receives, and refuses to allow anyone to call him Penguin. But later, feelings of hate, greed, and vengeance overcome him, and Penguin is the only name he wants to be known by. The Penguin unlike the Joker in the original Batman movie is a pitiful, depressing creature. I felt so sorry for him I was ready to cry. How could his birth parents be so cruel to him? This kind of dark story may have worked for "The Elephant Man", or maybe even "The Sixth Sense", but not for "Batman". "Batman" is supposed to be based on a comic book character, played out for action, adventure, and even laughs. This is not supposed to be a serious dramatic tragedy, like Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist", or even "Great Expectations." Like in the original "Batman" film, Batman is portrayed as a loner, an oddball who happens to be on the right side of the law. Even though he is summoned by Commissioner Gordon (Pat Hingle) via the Batsignal to handle a recent crime wave, he is still feared by many people in Gotham City because of his scientific genius and mystique. Keaton is not as wooden and comical as Adam West (the original Batman) was, but is completely overshadowed by the pitiful Penguin, and the fetishistic Catwoman.
Michelle Pfeiffer who plays Max Shreck's (Christopher Walken) secretary curiously stumbles upon her bosses scheme to control Gotham City. She then is thrown to her death by the evil tycoon, so that there won't be any witnesses to his illegal activity. Pfeiffer however, is licked back to life by alley cats, and later becomes Catwoman. Catwoman sews up her own fetish costume and mask, and vows vengeance on Shreck and the rest of Gotham City ESPECIALLY THE MEN.
Catwoman being a "cat" has nine lives, one of which she loses courtesy of Shreck, one courtesy of Batman, and one courtesy of Penguin after she tells him that he is too ugly to deserve her affections. The Penguin attached her to his flying umbrella, and she flies off to her third death, in a scene of outstanding special effects and creativity by director Tim Burton. Now this is one fantasy sequence that is classic comic book Batman. Later in the movie, in the Penguin's hideout, she loses her fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh lives when Shreck pulls his gun on her and also Batman. Will she also lose her eighth and ninth? I enjoyed Tim Burton's special effects, his dark, brooding Gotham City set and skyline. There were some good acting performances especially by Michelle Pfeiffer, but "Batman Returns" spends too much time dwelling on the shame and hurt of Oswald being dumped and abandoned by his birth parents. This type of screenplay is certainly not meant for the young audience that superhero films are supposed to appeal to appeal to. Maybe if "Batman Returns" had some comic relief, and comical characters to deliver it, it would have been better. But the character who we empathize with most with is the Penguin who is not sinister or goofy but pitiful. This is not what comic book Batman is supposed to be about.