You want to get Nuts? C'mon! Let's get Nuts!!!

Rating: 9/10 (23 January 2016)

Well, a mutilated circus freak runs for mayor, Bruce Wayne learns that fishy swirl is supposed to be cold, Michelle Pfieffer becomes the leather fetish fantasy of a million school boys and Christopher Walken acts like he has no idea why he's here in this insane Batman sequel that is completely bonkers, but still awesome.
After delivering a monstrous hit in 1989, Tim Burton was lured back in 1992, and despite McHappy Meal tie ins and big plans to make lots and lots of toys, he went and made a movie that was about as un-toyetic (a term I heard coined by Joel Schumacher) as you can get. We have a dirty joking sewer dwelling circus freak living with an army of penguins in the remains of Artic World, we have a woman wearing skin tight leather giving herself a bath by licking her suit and putting live canaries in her mouth (no seriously, Michelle Pfieffer actually had a live canary in her mouth during one of the scenes in this movie), we have Christopher Walken throwing secretaries out of the top story of his department store building and then offering to be covered "up to his eyeballs in raw sewerage." Then there's Michael Keaton tying bombs to people's chest and then laughing at them before punching them in a hole to explode. While I love this movie, it is not hard to see why the film company was a little annoyed with what they got given by director Burton here.
We open 30 years in the past with Pee Wee Herman (Paul Ruebens) and Simone (Diane Salinger) as the Cobblepotts, an upper class Gotham City couple who give birth to a deformed son who, as well as having conjoined fingers resembling flippers, is also able to kill cats and eat them while a toddler. Not wanting the burden of raising a child with a lot of problems, they decide to dump him in a freezing river where he eventually gets discovered and raised by penguins.
Fast forwarding to Modern Gotham, the little Cobblepott has grown up to be The Penguin, villainous leader of the Red Triangle Circus gang who start conducting series of raids on Gotham. In the meantime corrupt and opportunistic business man Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) is trying to get council approval to build a new power plant, that will actually act as a capacitor that sucks power and stores it (?)... Anyway, his secretary, Selina Kyle, a shy wallflower who lives in a crappy apartment and has relationship issues, finds out this confusing information and then attempts to black mail Shreck, who throws her out of the top story of his Department Store building, where she is revived by cats and goes insane, becoming Catwoman. After the accident, Selina meets Bruce Wayne and the two embark upon a much weirder, but somehow more engaging romance than Wayne had with Vicki Vale in the first film.
Anyway Catwoman and the Penguin eventually work together to take on Batman while Shreck tries to get Penguin elected mayor. Everything goes wrong and the three of them end up trying to kill each other as they all converge upon Arctic world along with Batman for a final showdown which involves rockets strapped to penguins backs, a woman being shot 4 times, a man being electrocuted to the point of becoming a charred corpse, and another one with sewerage (or some other type of unpleasant green goo) oozing out of their mouth before dropping dead.
Yeah. Kid's movie folks. Anyway, apart from being way over the top for the intended audience this is a wonderful world that Burton has created and he has populated it with some fascinating characters brought to life by great performances. Michelle Pfieffer is utterly fearless as Selina Kyle/ Catwoman. Hers is a riveting creation, dripping with sexiness and cynicism that we see echoes of in Anne Hathaway's Dark Knight Rises Selina Kyle 20 years later. In the case of De Vito, he is aided by a script that plays to his strengths, giving him all types of crudity and innuendo to spout, but it's worth nothing without the menace he brings with the way he carries himself and his line delivery. Michael Keaton approaches Wayne with the same brooding he did in the original, but once again gives frequent winks to the audience. Christopher Walken isn't really needed here, but he still brings something to the film by acting like you'd expect a normal person to act in these circumstances. He greets most of his scenes with a confused look on his face and a determination to dead pan and take it all in stride.
There's so many other things that can be talked about here, I haven't even got into the look of Gotham or the minor players, but this is such a dense vision, so brilliantly realized in such a bonkers way, we'd be here all day.
This is nuts. Absolutely nuts, but at the same time it's bloody brilliant. It's a shame Burton's vision alienated studios to the point this was the last time we would see him, or Keaton, but what a fun ride they gave us for two films! Batman Returns may not make a great deal of sense, but it is a rich, brooding, compelling and infinitely watchable film that I appreciate more and more as it ages. Arguably the best in the series and well worth a look more than twenty years on.