What Don't You Like About "Batman Forever"?

[MeanJoePhaser]

barnaclelapse wrote:

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I still think that on paper, in theory that there was nothing wrong with casting Uma Thurman and Arnie as the bad guys. It's just that something went wretchedly awry with the writing, more or less.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJWpmPGCR1c

Yeah, the writing.

[Captaindemotion]

^ Uma was fine. Arnie - not so much ... I think Freeze is a pretty stupid character anyway, but Patrick Stewart or Jeremy Irons might have made something interesting of him. But they wouldn't have made much of him with that terrible script.

[cardinal biggles]

MeanJoePhaser wrote:

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7. Val Kilmer, like Jones is a decent actor...most of the time. I honestly forget he ever played Batman. He doesn't register, not even as Bruce Wayne.

Kilmer sort of ends up as the George Lazenby of the Batman universe. Everyone remembers Keaton, we all know Bale because he's the current guy, and Clooney made a dent just by virtue of how awful Batman & Robin was. Kilmer was just there, and was totally overshadowed by his costars. Even with Nicholson hamming it up in Batman, and DeVito being grotesque and Pfeiffer vamping in Returns, Keaton always managed to carve out a space for himself in those films. Kilmer was literally overwhelmed by Carrey and Jones (and even O'Donnell to a certain degree).

I enjoyed Forever when it was first released (I was 15 then), but it hasn't held up at all. Burton's take on Gotham as a city may have been grotesque and brooding and Gothic, but at least it looked like it was tethered down to reality on some level. In Forever, you start getting the ludicrously tall buildings, and the ludicrously tall elevated highways to go with them, but even that pales to the ri-goddamn-diculousness of Gotham in Batman & Robin (elevated highways miles off the ground, an observatory in the palm of the hand of a ginormous fucking statue). The production design was just obnoxious on every level... neon and lasers and smoke, the "organic" look of Batman's new vehicles, the Batmobile actually rising out of the ground on a giant spinning platform. Meh.

[payndz201]

I actually sort of enjoy Batman Forever, because - let's be honest - neither of Burton's Batman movies were exactly perfection either, and Forever at least has a kind of endearing camp gleefulness.

But it was still a mess. Hell, they screwed up Two-Face's big introduction shot by cutting to the security guard at the exact moment they should have been revealing that he had, y'know, two faces. And that was right at the beginning, so it set the tone for the rest of the film. The horrible screeching score ("BLUWAAA! BLUWAAA! BLUWAAAaaaAAAAaaaaAAA!"), the 5 mph car chase, the out-of-nowhere Sonar Batsuit to save the day and especially Two-Face's split personality being almost entirely ignored in favour of literal "Muwah hah hah!" Jokerisms were all dreadful, while Kilmer and Kidman were just... bland.

Carrey was still fun, though. For some reason, the game of Battleships and his line of "A waterrrrrry GRAVE!" always get a laugh from me.

[suarezguy]

^I thought the main theme was OK for a lighter type of Batman but indeed, the blandness of Kilmer and Kidman weighed the film down a lot.

[Broccoli]

The music score for Batman Forever was fantastic. Had a very operatic quality to it.


At least, I liked it.

[cardinal biggles]

I prefer Elfman's scores for the two Burton films, but one of the few things I solidly do like from Forever was Elliot Goldenthal's score. It felt kind of jazzy and obnoxious in places, but so did the movie.

[Admiral_Young]

Oooh I missed Bane and Poison Ivy. Bane was a farce and Uma was over the top as ewll.

[Garak]

"Hold me, Kiss me, Kill me, Thrill me" was really the only good thing to come out of that movie.

[Marc]

MeanJoePhaser wrote:

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Clooney is like Adam West (often saying his dialouge seriously despite ridiculous situations around him) with a little more one-liner flippancy (Hi, Freeze, I'm Batman."

Well I guess they could of tried the line from B:TAS

"Freeze" (as in stop there)

"that's Mr Freeze to you".

[steveman]

I rather liked it because of this: http://www.slipups.com/items/34602.html

And that's pretty much it.

But seriously, there wasn't a frame in this movie where Nicole Kidman didn't look absolutely stunning.

As for the movie itself... below average. Though it probably came closer to the spirit of the TV show than any other Batman film has.

[Caligula]

Three words: Tommy Lee Jones. He plays Two-Face more or less just like his character from Natural Born Killers, i.e. excessively over-the-top.