| Batman Forever (1995) Cast:Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey, Nicole Kidman, Chris O'Donnell This time Batman takes on Two-Face and The Riddler to save Gotham city all the while picking up a sidekick in Robin (Played by O'Donnell) in this terrible sequel which goes overboard on the whackiness, lacking the black humor and the psychology of the first. (At least Batman Returns succeeded there.) What Batman Forever suffers most from is that too many people have their fingers in the pie, so to speak. Sure the cast includes Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey but it might as well have been Mickey Rourke and Don Johnson in the roles, indeed even Harley Davidson and The Marlboro Man was better than this junk, the villians are so irritatingly one-note that it screams inside out from repetition. Certainly they should've gone with Billy Dee Williams for Two Face and John Glover for The Riddler (Who voiced him on the animated show) what we have instead is two great actors seriously miscast, Jones is an excellent actor but needs to be in roles less ridiculous. Carrey is great comic actor (Dumb and Dumber is one of my all time faves) but he's not the right guy for a part that needs restraint. Faring slightly better are the good guys played by Val Kilmer who is an adequate replacement for Keaton, O'Donnell is decent in the role and Kidman is just sexy looking and that's not a bad thing as she's very easy on the eyes. However Joel Schumacher's style is just not right, Schumacher would make a perfect action director, he's all about flash and doesn't care about substance, which is fine if your helming a Sly Stallone thriller but in a movie about Batman well it requires backstory, and substance. Having Schumacher direct a character driven movie is like trying to force a square peg into a round hole. It just doesn't work. All of this is pretty unwatchable, the love affair between Kilmer and Kidman isn't half as fun as Pfeiffer and Keaton's, the villians are cartoonish at best and well it's just not very fun. This is where the Batman series hit dangerous waters, it became intentionally campy. And as all critics know you never, ever set out to make a campy movie because it just becomes a bad pun. I'm giving it an extra half star because it doesn't have Alicia Silverstone. D.Joel Schumacher*1/2 |