Batman Returns Review

Given total control after the first film's money, Burton made something openly perverse: a snowbound gothic about three broken creatures who all wear costumes because their real selves are unbearable. Michelle Pfeiffer is extraordinary, playing Selina Kyle's collapse and reassembly as a genuine psychological break rather than a costume change, and her scenes with Keaton, especially the masked ball where both recognise each other and neither can say it, are the only adult romance in any Batman film.

Danny DeVito's Penguin is a deliberate act of audience hostility, a bile spitting sewer creature designed to be pitiable and disgusting at once. Stefan Czapsky shoots the whole thing in bone white and black, and Bo Welch's Gotham is even better than Furst's. The failures are also total. There is barely a plot, only a sequence of grotesques colliding; Christopher Walken's Max Shreck is a device rather than a character; and Batman remains the least interesting person on screen, still killing casually. Parents revolted, the tie in deals collapsed, and Burton was replaced. Understandable, and a loss.