Batman Forever Review

Warner wanted the merchandise back, so Schumacher delivered a Gotham lit like a nightclub in colours no city has ever been, with a Batsuit that added anatomy nobody asked for. It is not a disaster, which is the strange thing; there is a real film buried under the noise about a man trying to give up the mask, and Val Kilmer plays Bruce Wayne with an appealing stillness that the movie keeps interrupting. Chris O'Donnell's Robin arrives with a workable grievance and no room to develop it.

The two villains destroy each other. Jim Carrey is doing his own act at full volume and is occasionally very funny; Tommy Lee Jones is visibly resentful of having to compete and simply shouts, and Two Face, one of the great tragic figures in the source material, is reduced to a coin flipping goon. Nicole Kidman's psychiatrist exists to be tied up. The plot involves a brain sucking television box. What survives is the score and a few images. Everything else is a franchise loudly changing its mind about what it is.