Film

Batman Forever (1995)

Director: Joel Schumacher

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

The second sequel to Tim Burton's 1989 blockbuster makes its predecessors appear models of subtlety and coherence. In theory the film marks a new lease of life for the caped crusader (new star, new faces, new director); in practice everything about Forever feels stale and self- conscious. Kilmer is a more sensual Bruce Wayne than Michael Keaton, but if anything his remodelled body-tight Batsuit proves even more of a straitjacket. As in Returns, our hero has to fight for screen time with not one, but two scene-stealing villains, Jones's (wasted) Harvey Two-Face and Carrey's Riddler, plus the love interest, Kidman's ludicrously perverse shrink Dr Meridian. As if that's not enough, he's been stuck with a partner-in-crimebusting, O'Donnell's butch young Robin, obviously designed to broaden the demographics (the queer styling even runs to a fetishistic close-up of the Bat-butt). The perfunctory plot concerns the Riddler's mass-marketing of a televisual brain drain.

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