Allo, allo, allo! Davie Portman here requesting all of your feedback for “Batman Forever” directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Val Kilmer!
Braden and I are back to our Batman review after a short break and would love to hear your thoughts on Batman, Robin, The Riddler and so much more!!
Batman must battle former district attorney Harvey Dent, who is now Two-Face and Edward Nygma, The Riddler with help from an amorous psychologist and a young circus acrobat who becomes his sidekick, Robin.
As a borderline millennial who experienced this movie at the tender but devilish age of 12, the nostalgic pangs are strong with this one. The mid-90s were the age of the official soundtrack, and Batman Forever delivers in spades:
U2? Seal?? The Flaming Lips?! PJ HARVEY?!?!?
We all owned that CD. I still have a beaten-up copy of it somewhere around here.
Taking off my junior-high blinders, what a goddamn piece of shit this thing is. We get the debut of the bat-nipples, zero gravitas, and Val Kilmer providing about as much charisma as a cinder block.
One bit of fun we’re able to pull from this mess is the chemistry between Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones. Ironically, Jones despised Carrey, telling him to his face that he hated him and “couldn’t sanction his buffoonery”, according to Jim on the Norm MacDonald Live YouTube show.
Thanks to Christopher Nolan for saving the motherfucking franchise.
By any critical standard this is not a good movie. But I was 10 and had no critical standards. It has Jim Carrey being wacky, a guy dressed as Batman and a guy dressed as Robin. Cool. 10 year old me needed nothing more.
Mid-30s me needs lot more. The film doesn’t get any of the characters ‘right’. (That is to say, comic accurate.) But neither did the Burton films. And Chase Meridian is a worse love interest than Vicky Vale, which I did not think was possible.
Still, I like this a whole lot more than the Burton films. Any love for this movie is 100% nostalgia. I haven’t seen it in years, but I wore out my VHS copy as a kid. Sitting here typing out feedback, I can picture damn near the entire movie. At least it made an impression.
Until rewatching all of the films you have so far reviewed, my perception of them all has changed. I lumped in the two burtons and the two Schumachers as being equally good or bad. However, returns has went down in my estimation, whilst forever has gone slightly up, and of the 4 I think these 2 are actually the most similar, for my tastes.
As good or bad as the films are, I always enjoy the review. Cheers.