A great cast, but the direction and story telling leave much to be desired

Rating: 7/10 (10 July 2015)

*WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS* Batman Returns, for me, is a movie of sharp contrast. Some aspects of the film I love, while others I think are just plain bad. Before I get into the negatives and positives, let me just say that I still enjoy Batman Returns quite a bit, and I think for the first hour and fifteen minutes, it was a worthy successor to the original Batman movie in 1989. So, the negatives. Tim Burton's directing here is not good. I understand he likes doing weird stuff, and that was prevalent in the original Batman movie more or less. This one... goes a little too crazy. I like the dark and ominous tone this movie sets up, but unfortunately at times it just throws that out the window to have a scene that's just like... what? At one point in the movie Penguin puts a little control device on the Batmobile that allows him to control it, instead of Batman. Penguin controls it by driving a recreation of the bat-mobile, that looks like it's a kid's ride at a carnival. And throughout the scene Penguin has a TV screen that he uses to taunt Batman with, while making some truly horrible jokes. Yeah, it gets that crazy. And another thing, does anyone else notice just how many stretches there are where a central character disappears completely. Batman's in maybe thirty to forty minutes of the movie (okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but c'mon! It's called Batman Returns, not Batman shows up in a few scenes here and there). Catwoman disappears for a good twenty minutes towards the end of the film, and then just shows up at the end without any explanation. It's just...bizarre. Too many scenes that seem as though they're supposed to be taken seriously just come off as laughable, such as Penguin shooting his rebellious henchman who just stands there stupidly, or the police officers who open fire on the Penguin on sight, y'know, the former mayoral candidate. Then there's the cast, and this is where the movie really shines. Christopher Walken is delightfully over the top as Max Shreck, and is a joy to watch throughout the film, as he tosses lots of great dialogue around. 'Next time I'll push her out a higher window!' he remarks, after discovering Selena Kyle is still alive. Michael Keaton is still a great, if underused Batman, and then there's Michelle Pfeiffer of course, who is just a great Catwoman. Her and Keaton had some great chemistry together in this movie, and the scenes between them were easily the best things in the movie. Michael Gough is great as the dignified Alfred, and he and Keaton share some good scenes. And then... there's Danny Devito as the Penguin, who I just... I don't know why, but I just did not like him. He was kind of funny for a while, and even managed to be fairly sympathetic, but later on he just got too goofy, and he really doesn't do all that much, despite being featured so strongly. He was basically just a figure head for Shreck. Later on he hatches his own schemes, but the fact that he straps rockets to the backs of hundreds of penguins and sends them out controlled by radio waves to destroy Gotham doesn't help his case much. There are some good action scenes though, such as the fights between Batman and Catwoman, not to mention the numerous times the circus gang shows up and Batman has to fight them, such as the acrobats who he gets into some pretty fun martial arts duels with. On a side note, Batman killing people is something that kind of irks me, and I kind of like. Change is good, and I like that there's some difference to this than the Nolan movies in regards to themes, but seeing Batman killing people is just...weird. In the end, I really liked the first chunk of this movie, and absolutely loved Keaton, Pfeiffer, and Walken in their roles, but I really didn't like the end, the directing, or Devito. However, it was still entertaining, so I would recommend watching this movie if you haven't already.