Bats With Wings Are Doing Their Things

Like Burton’s original Batman, the 1992 sequel Batman Returns is a mixed bag of success and mis-fire resulting in another flawed classic. The most prominent improvement is the switch to a style that is more in keeping with Tim Burton’s twisted fantasy visions meaning that this version of the caped crusader’s adventures is more of a bizarre, nightmarish fairy-tale.

Also on the up-side is the wonderful production design which is German expressionist than the last film, the more colourful photography and mise-en-scene adding to a more fantastic/comic book feel, the increase in warped, black humour and a psychology centric story which is more focused on the clash of tortured souls of the Bat, the Cat and the Penguin.

What Batman Returns gains in wit, violence and a disturbing tone it loses is scale (it’s stage bound shoot means the film feels much smaller in scale) and the lack of any coherent action sequences which are now replaced by brief bursts of silly, comedic bursts of violence.

The biggest commonality the film shares with its predecessor is the lack of discipline with the script. There’s a tendency to wander off track and watch some characters amusingly fart around, which is extremely entertaining from scene to scene, but it never really gels as a whole and the narrative flows like piss from a crooked penis.

At least Burton has assembled a top notch cast with the excellent Keaton unfortunately side-lined (he only appears once in the first 35 minutes) for his villainous co-stars. Danny De Vito obviously relishes his disturbing, animalistic role as The Penguin, Christopher Walken is good enough to be the baddie of the movie all on his own without his costumed chums while Michelle Pfeiffer is both seductive and sexy while being kooky and scatterbrained. It’s quite a remarkably deranged performance that fits squarely into Burton’s offbeat vision.

For me on the whole, not quite as good as the 1989 Batman, but so much better in many other ways.