Batman
Region 2 Warner Bros. DVD
(1989)
review by Billion$Baby

Travel back in my time machine. The year is 1989 and there I am, a tall skinny kid with a Metallica t-shirt and an acne covered face en-route to the cinema. A Batman movie, this is gonna rock!! Let's jump forward just two and a half hours in time. Said skinny kid leaves cinema, a what the fuck was that?, give me my sodding money back look plastered all over his spotty face. I then spent the next 12 months staring in disbelief at the other kids at school who described this Tim Burton effort as a great film. After 14 years in exile, I recently bought this feature on DVD to re-appraise it hoping that perhaps it had improved with time.

Oh dear. You know, I look back at Richard Donner's Superman film and apart from the dodgy blatantly model sized flooding sequence at the end, it holds up pretty well, in fact, it hasn't aged, it's a timeless
film. This Tim Burton feature came in well beneath my expectations in '89 and I think it's even less impressive in the current day. We shouldn't be comparing this $35 million Warner Brothers Batman adaption to the old crappy 60's television series starring West, I'll say that for a start. I'll also say that I don't find this Burton film to be very dark in mood at all despite what I have often heard from others.

I wasn't too impressed with the casting of Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne/Batman. Aside from the fact that he doesn't even resemble or remind me of the character, I find it very hard to believe that he could even manage to punch his way through a polystyrene wall. Alfred doesn't look like Alfred, but that's okay 'cause Commissioner Gordon also doesn't look anything like Gordon, and The Joker's physical build is all wrong, Oh and Harvey "Two-Face" Dent, a white character, is played by Lando from Empire Strikes Back. None of the cast in this film resemble their comic book equivalents. With comics being a visual medium, that's pretty shocking and I think that it's also lazy. I have been told that WB offered Bill "Dr. Venkman" Murray the Bruce Wayne role before Michael Keaton which speaks for itself really.

Jack Nicholson, who's in Kubrick's The Shining mode, has to carry this whole film much like James Woods did in John Carpenter's Vampires. Try imagining the film without Nicholson and I'm sure that you'd admit just how unbearable it would be. Tedious for want of a better word. It got so much better on Burton's sequel both in terms of the camera work where we see some pretty nifty movements and shots, and in terms of the film pace. I'd prefer to watch Pee-Wee or Planet Of The Apes rather than this 1989 Burton feature. I consider this to be the most studio controlled and quite frankly boring of Burton's films released to date. Quite how DC comics most exciting character became something quite as lacklustre, limp and non-thought provoking as this big budgeted film, I honestly don't know. There's no point Burton trying to produce a dark looking film noir when it's full of mincy characters who are less threatening than a three week old banana.

We see a glimpse of Batman four minutes in. See that obviously hand-drawn cartoon blob on the lower right of the screen. Er...yes, that's Batman! So Matted-on-man then decides to make a real humanoid appearance. Batman kicks out at a completely laughable non-threatening hoodlum (er...like all of them in this film actually, bar the pre-Joker villain played by Nicholson) who somehow goes flying backwards through a wooden door and then Bats performs some rather feeble looking acts to capture yet another laughable criminal.

NB. Tim Burton, please don't ever bother trying to make a martial arts picture. All I can say about thisscene is that the Batman suit looks good.

Right, that's enough Batman for now. That two minute burst is all you're gonna get for a while. Meet Knox the wisecracking journalist, he's here to try to make the film a bit more interesting. Trust me, you'll be really glad he's here. Also meet Kim Basinger, she's the Hollywood love interest. You see that was the problem with Batman, just not even romance or love plots. WB have fixed that fault for us. Will Michael Keaton and Kim Basinger get it on and stay together? Yes, bat meets girl, bat gets girl, girl loses bat, bat gets girl back, the classic love story. So we first meet the hopelessly bumbling Bruce Wayne at one of his socialite parties with poor old Alfred the butler rescuing pens and empty wine glasses when Bruce starts dropping then in peculiar places after taking just one look at Kim Basinger. I liked seeing the foreign armour costumes that Kim and Knox discover in a room at the mansion though.

Right back to the tongue-in-cheek Dick Tracy action. Jack Nicholson and his gang have been ratted out by his crime boss over a girl. WB are feeling gracious enough to offer some more Batman glimpses here, very kind of them, thanx. "That's it stand there Michael, pull and yank your bat gizmos. Excellent. Cut!" So after some distinctly unimpressive pulling, yanking and standing snippets of Bats in action, we then have a good scene (shock horror) where Batman meets the Joker and fails to save him from falling into a vat of toxic waste. Right that two minute burst was your lot, back to the love story.

Kim and Bruce have a date. Cue comedy dinner scene, a horrendous and embarassing "And there was young Master Bruce leading his grey pony..." anecdote from Alfred the butler, and then over to the post-dinner bonding scene between Kim and Bruce. ZZZZzzzzzzz.....No, wait!! Good scene alert!!! The backstreet plast
ic surgeon and The Joker's reaction after he sees his face. I really like this scene!! This is the best scene in the film and I love the way that it was shot. A bit more romance is shown just after this to compensate for part of the film becoming highly enjoyable. That trends occurs rather a lot in this film.

From this point onwards, Jack Nicholson's performance becomes pretty embarassing more often than not. I'll say this for his performance though, at least it makes the film more interesting. Oh god, it's Kim again, investigating her new boyfriend Bruce Wayne. Af
ter that, it's back to the Dick Tracy approach with occassional big wisecracks from Jack Nicholson who's hamming it up far more than he ever did in Kubrick's The Shining, interfused with more Kim and Bruce romance antics or if you're really, really, really lucky, they might even show a glimpse or two of Batman.

I have to give special mention to one horrible scene in particular. That's when Jack Nicholson and his mincer criminal gang are all dancing around for ages to the crappest song ever recorded (by Prince) which is being played on a portable stereo at the bad museum set. This is the second most embassing scene ever filmed in motion picture history. Only Reign Of Fire managed to top it fairly recently. Quite how this 1989 film can be considered to be different to the old cheesy television series after a scene like this, I really don't know. I thought that the Joker was mad but intelligent but here it just comes across that he's actually a complete tit with the shittest taste in music that you could imagine. His other favourite records are probably Val Doonican, 5-Star, New Kids On The Block and Vanilla Ice.

BTW Prince was signed to WB who of course also financed this film. See how that works? Make that money. My sincere condolances to any poor bastard out there that bought Prince's soundtrack.(ed note:I bought it for a dime at a yard sale! It STILL wasn't worth it!)

Halfway through this two hour long film and you've only seen four minutes of Batman. And when you see Bruce Wayne, he's got this stupid love story happening with Kim Basinger in almost all of the scenes. Right, good scene alert!! WB are prepared to show us 10
whole minutes of Batman and some shots of his batmobile. There is one catch though, it's Kim Basinger and Batman together. "Hollywood wants romance in our Batman film. Now, action!" And who said that Kim's character wasn't needed after all? Well, me actually.

There's VERY FEW moments in this film without Kim Basinger present from this point onwards. There are occassional good snippets interfused with the usual rubbish, ie, The Joker attempting to dance on his carnival float to another shitter than shit track by Prince. I guess that the music store staff must piss themselves laughing whenever The Joker goes shopping for his cd's. Once again, all of The Joker's supposed criminal gang look about as menacing as a bunch of grapes. Look at this scene and then tell me that this film feels "dark" and any different to that crappy television series from the 60's. Seeing the Bat-Plane and hearing The Joker complaining about Batman stealing his balloons are the only things that keep it bearable.

Well, we get a pretty cool finale. I suppose. It almost makes up for all of the rubbish, the amount of time spent with Kim Basinger and the criminally short amount of time where we actually see Batman. Once again though, the fighting seen here looks very camp and hardly convincing. I thought that Batman should have been much formidable in his fights than the performance rendered here but I do like what happens to The Joker at the end.

I will never understand why such a poor Hollywoodised comic book adaption as this one here should be regarded so highly. It's not just Burton that's at fault, the script was piss poor to begin with and Batman certainly didn't need to become a love story. Nowhere near enough Bats for my liking and when he does appear, I'm rarely impressed with his limp antics.

As for this disc, well it's a nothing special print with nothing special 5.1 sound in one of those naff cardboard cases that WB like to use. And you get a very short amount of production notes - Great, thanks
a lot WB. I actually enjoy Batman Returns but then it's about 700% more interesting. As well as featuring a lot more of Batman together with Catwoman, it's less commercial and much more fast paced. It's not a crap love story either.

I wish that New Line or Sony would make a Batman film instead of Warner Brothers. They've had four attempts and they've still not managed to provide anything that did the character real justice.