Batman Forever, 1995. Directed by Joel Schumacher. Val Kilmer, Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris O'Donnell, Nicole Kidman, Michael Gough, Pat Hingle.
Two-Face is on a rampage in Gotham City and Batman must stop him. Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne faces off against Edward Nygma, a new competitor with a new mind-enhancing electronic device. Nygma has designs on Batman, too, and pursues a vendetta as The Riddler. Inevitably, The Riddler and Two-Face team up to take on The Dark Knight. Caught in the middle is young circus acrobat Dick Grayson, whose parents have been killed by Two-Face. Grayson is taken in by Bruce Wayne and becomes Batman's partner, Robin....
This is the Bergen-Belsen of summer movies, an artifact conceived to lure millions of filmgoers, lemming-like, to their doom. Director Joel Scumacher's crimes against humanity continue to mount and mount...will no one step forward to stop this man? Gone is the brooding image of The Dark Knight, replaced by a camp creation more ridiculous than the sixties television series ever dreamed of being. Gotham City, originally imagined by Tim Burton as if "hell had erupted through the pavement and kept going," is replaced by a garishly colored day-glow eyesore. This movie mistakes motion for action and has storytelling that is so lax that it makes Tim Burton look like Billy Wilder. Ack.
Subtextually, this is as much of a fetish movie as Batman Returns was, only without the tragic undercurrents that make Batman Returns palatable (Batman and The Catwoman are so engrossed in their fetish lifestyles that they have no hope of happiness together). Here, the fetish subtext is laced with homosexuality. The depiction of Batman and Robin here harkens back to Fredrick Wertham's descripiton of their lifestyle as the "wish dream of two homosexuals living together." A gay friend of mine claims that this is the gayest straight movie he has ever seen. The movie leers. When Batman and Robin suit up, they each get a matching zoom shot of their rubber-clad asses. The relationship between The Riddler and Two-Face is a counterpoint to this. Certainly, Jim Carrey's portrayal is a flaming reinterpretation of his Ace Ventura persona.
The end result of all of this noodling is that Batman is a "concerned citizen" who is Batman because he chooses to be (????!!!!!) and not because he is driven by the demon of his parents murder, Two-Face is nothing more than muscle for The Riddler, and The Riddler is simply flaming. Even if one concedes that the filmmakers were attempting to introduce an element of the old television show into the procedings here, everything spins out of control because director Joel Schumacher is only interested in assembling the elements of a big opening weekend. The actual movie...well, as summer movies it's one of the worst misunderstandings of a pop culture icon I've ever seen. Crap through and through.