Dark, perverse, engaging but not great

Rating: 5/10 (6 September 2005)

Batman returns is a strange film definitely worth a watch for any Tim Burton fan. The movie succeeds in its artistic presentation of a cruel dark perverse world, where in the night bizarre things happen.
Keaton was the perfect batman but I believe he is wasted in this movie, through Tim Burtons decision to focus primarily on the villains. The scenes he is given he plays well but his dark physcosis is tackled in a somewhat comical way this time round.
Burtons art work is great in this film with the designs for the abandoned Antarctic zoo, and city hall. Once again Danny Elfman provides a brilliant dark Gothic neo-classical score.
Devito has received mixed reception for his performance as the penguin, he attempts to be larger than life, but he fails in producing a performance as entertaining as Jack Nicholsons the Joker. At many points in the film he is annoying.
Michelle Pfeifer does what she can with the Selina Kyle/cat-woman character. Her best moments are when she recovers from an attempted murder and loses complete control trashing her apartment.
Christopher Walken is probably the best thing in this film, his character is eccentric engaging and strangely charming. No one could've been better in this role than him, he has such a persuasive intriguing speaking tone, ideal for his manipulating and ca jading of the Penguin, when Christopher Walken speaks he subtly forces you to listen, this is the sign of a great actor.
However this film fails in its lack of plot depth, it looks stylish on the surface like all of Tim Burtons movie, but the plot is a little sparse and thrown around. Burtons fundamental flaw as a director is that he focuses on style over substance.
In saying this Burtons dark representation of Gotham used in both his films is perfect for the dark knight to inhabit.
This film is not up to the standard of the first batman, primarily because Tim Burton was given too much artistic licence, so that he could give the film a complete Tim Burton stylisation.
But yet another fault is that, if you decide to make a dark film ,there is no place for cringing lines such as "eat floor high in fibre".
All in all Batman returns is the second best batman film, but no as Good as the original which places comic book themes in a dark but realistic world, this film places comic book themes in a dark but ridiculous and somewhat perverse world. This is what turned the masses away from it. An art film is never a commercial success, but like many other art films this has achieved cult status.
Batman returns is an okay film that could've been much better if Tim Burton had been controlled.