Less than the sum of its parts

Rating: 6/10 (6 September 2010)

Watching this for the first time recently on Blu-ray, I was a little disappointed. The film has a lot going for it: a great music score; an impressive use of colour; vividly-drawn villains; nice sets; beautiful photography. The problems seem to be with the plot and the handling of the characters. A lot of the action seems arbitrary, with all of the characters lacking believable motivation. It's hard to care about any of them. Danny DeVito as the Penguin makes a better villain than Jack Nicholson's Joker (the previous film had toppled over into "the Jack Nicholson show") but the actor and the director fail to make the character even vaguely sympathetic. The Penguin wants to be liked, so what does he do to achieve this? He's a villain so, naturally, he cons everyone. Michael Keaton is competent as Batman but again, it's hard to warm to him. Even having seen the previous film, the viewer doesn't get much sense of what makes him do what he does. Michele Pfeiffer's Catwoman comes off best in this respect, mainly down to a good performance: again, the script doesn't make much sense any of her actions.
The director's eccentricities are initially appealing, but the film just isn't enough *fun*. Maybe Tim Burton did treat the material with respect, but the overall effect is too po-faced. The essential ridiculousness of the characters isn't quite acknowledged – we don't laugh at these grotesque and dysfunctional people, but we can't believe in them either. Finally, the film is too long-winded. With tighter editing, ten or fifteen minutes could easily be taken off its running time, giving it a faster pace.
I'll be branded as a heretic for saying so, but I think the third of the initial Batman quadrilogy (Batman Forever) is the best of the four films for bringing back the fun, just as Ed Wood is the best of Tim Burton's films by a long way.