This is Tim Burton, not Batman

Rating: 3/10 (28 October 2008)

I was in the Emergency Room a few months ago. After all of the good shows were finished, I searched for something to watch and stumbled on "Batman Returns." With no guide, I decided to stay there. I noticed that I sort of enjoyed it, but everything seems more entertaining when you are in the Emergency Room and your pain just melted away. I was also numb to the transgressions of the film because, for some reason I will never comprehend, I had watched it more than one time before. Numbness, however, does not equal quality, and it is never there the first viewing. The problems evident in the first film grow as cancer and leave only sadness, hurt and shame.
A crime wave increasingly engulfs Gotham City as Christmas approaches. Max Schreck (Christopher Walken) pushes his design for a new power plant in a private meeting with the Mayor (Michael Murphy) and his aides. In reality, his plant is designed to drain power, simulating a power shortage so he can be the city's savior and turn a sick profit. When Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer), his insecure secretary, discovers this purpose, Schreck shoves her out of a top floor window. Revived by Cats, she returns to her apartment, mentally snaps, and becomes Catwoman.
Meanwhile, the Penguin (Danny DeVito) kidnaps Schreck. In his lair near the sewers, he blackmails Schreck into helping him with a heroic introduction to the public. Schreck soon arrives at a scheme to recall the mayor so he can push his plant unopposed. He convinces Penguin to run as the replacement. Even when he bites a man's nose for all to see, the public still adores him. That reaction is simply too big to leap, much like how the Penguin's men find blueprints to the Batmoblie, much less the technical knowledge to rewire it. Catwoman later joins Penguin after Batman interferes with her vendetta against Schreck, but Penguin is preoccupied with bedding her.
The plot I have just described is not as clearly stated in the film. The film jerks unevenly from one subplot to another, and eventually the main story becomes blurred under all the shifting sands.
Director Tim Burton's portrayal of the Penguin is unforgivable. Instead of a high class criminal who happens to be fat and have a big nose, Penguin is now a hideously deformed midget. When he is only a baby he eats a live cat. His hands look like claws. He spits and drools blue saliva. His underlings dress in circus costumes. At one point he eats a raw fish, and I don't mean sushi. He actually bites the fish and digs in. Scientists should study his immune system. He violates so many laws of biology he may as well be a new species.
Rarely has a cinema character been so filled with pain and hatred. His parents dumped him in a sewer stream as an infant. At some point, circus performers take him in and incorporate him into their freak show, later shut down after complaints of missing children. The Penguin has no function in life; he only wants to hurt people. He is a sexual deviant, such as the time he massages a woman's breast while placing a campaign button. His ultimate plan is so depraved the film should be rated R for that alone. When we see it in action, his gang's transportation is so inefficient they can not possibly finish even a fraction of what they are attempting.
The whole film is mean-spirited, but never more than during Penguin's demise. He is publicly disgraced and pelted with rotten fruit. Afterward, he wildly screams "MY NAME IS NOT OSWALD! IT IS PENGUIN! I AM NOT A HUMAN BEING! I AM AN ANIMAL!" Next, his life's dream fails and then his gang abandons him as Batman closes in for the kill. In the end, he is reduced to screams of misery as he wildly slashes air with his umbrella. As his slow, inhumane demise reaches its conclusion, blue ink pours from his mouth in such great amounts he would be dead in seconds were it blood. I normally enjoy seeing villains suffer, but the Penguin's thirty minute destruction is depressing, not fun. He was never treated as a human from day one; he never had a chance. Yes, he is evil, but the indescribable cruelty he suffers is so great that in the end I pitied him.
The film's blunders do not end with Penguin. Bruce Wayne (Michael Keaton) remains quiet and reclusive. "Why are you now determined to prove that this Penguin is not what he seems? Must you be the only lonely man-beast in town?" wonders Alfred (Michael Gough). We first see him sitting pensively, gazing at the floor as if an internal battle is happening in the deepest recesses of his mind. Again, the film treats Batman as being a curse. During a key scene between Wayne and Selina, he speaks about he could not reconcile the "two truths" of his life. His "difficulty with duality" destroyed his previous relationship. He later speaks about being "split right down the center." Even the cavernous, dark sets of Wayne Manor suggest a depressing, lonely existence.
The whole movie overflows with festering pain and permanent wounds. Instead of delivering a dynamite climax, the film focuses even more on torturing its characters. Schreck and Catwoman eventually turn up, and then it becomes her turn for an emotional beating. It is the only part of the climax that works, and it does because of Walken. Actually, the only dramas that work are those involving Schreck, and Walken deserves exclusive credit.
During all of this, Wayne tears off the hood of his Batsuit. Catwoman earlier penetrates it with homemade claws. The inconsistency continues as Wayne conveniently drops for five minutes after being shot. More proof that Burton is willing to bend anything to fit his misplaced exercise in malice and spite.