Movie Review: BATMAN FOREVER (1995) Starring Val Kilmer

Following the success of the recent Batman movies and a superhero poll I ran here over a year ago now, the other night I saw that Batman Forever was on TV, I’ll be honest it’s a movie that’s never really interested me, I may have seen the two originals starring Michael Keaton but I can’t really remember. Anyway I decided that since the Olympics is hogging so much of the schedule (rightly so) and there is very little on TV I may as well take a look at this and compare it to the more recent Dark Knight movies, turns out there is nothing to compare other than character names as Batman Forever would join my personal list of the worst movies I have ever seen.

Starring: Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey, Nicole Kidman, Chris O’Donnell and Drew Barrymore

The Plot

Are you ready? This is all pretty cheesy, but basically Two-Face (Jones) formerly Harvey Dent believes Batman is responsible for causing a court room incident which caused a whole side of his face to become disfigured, for this Two-Face unleashes his very own reign of terror upon Gotham City, it’s not long before Two-Face is joined by The Riddler (Carrey) a former employee of Bruce Wayne and a computer genius who has created a way of extracting information form the Human brain whilst they are watching TV. The Riddler teams up with Two-Face to bring Batman down whilst he is busy getting to grips with Dr Meridian (Kidman), luckily for Batman former circus performer Robin the Boy Wonder is there to help out.

The Verdict

First off I’m wondering just how they got so many big names involved in this movie, I mean the guys and girls mentioned above are not amateurs, Val Kilmer is a great actor along with Tommy Lee Jones, it could be argued that Jim Carrey was probably still up and coming at this point and then Nicole Kidman (married to Tom Cruise around then, I think) what was she doing here, I’m pretty sure they must look back now and think what was I doing? Drew Barrymore was also in the movie, although I can’t remember seeing her and let’s be honest this would have been the big time for Chris O’Donnell.

I laughed at this a lot, not because it was funny, no, no. It was just so ridiculous. I think maybe having seen the more recent Batman Offerings before this one has really given me to much expectation to be lived up to in these prior movies, but you know what? I don't care because those more recent updates are far superior to this junk, I kept watching for two reasons. One, lets see how stupid this movie is, incredibly stupid actually and two, to write this review.

Chris O'Donnel doing martial arts whilst doing some laundry, so corny I almost switched off at this point, although his laundry skills are actually better than his martial art ones, pretending to be Batman to Dr Meridian "wait doesn't Batman ever kiss the girl?" How cheesy? Just then the real Batman turns up and he's pissed (not literally), his car has just been jacked by some Boy Wonder named Robin, "holy rusted metal batman" come on give me a break, on the next punch I was expecting "BANG" or "WALLOP" to appear on my screen in a purple speech bubble. Batman Forever is so fake and comic book like its difficult to take seriously, yeah I know the new ones are comic book like too but at least we get a degree of realism, some decent action, and actors who luckily have had a decent script penned for them.

I read that the best thing about this movie is probably Jim Carrey as The Riddler, he's the most eccentric one without doubt but his performance is nowhere near as good as Jack Nicholson's or the far superior Oscar winning Heath Ledgers, for me in Batman Forever Jim Carrey is just Jim Carrey, he does what you expect Carrey to do, it's no different from watching Ace Ventura. Don't get me wrong I like Jim Carrey, I think he's a funny guy, but I prefer it when he's a little more serious, ludicrous when I'm about to say that I enjoy him in movies like Bruce Almighty because it's not serious, it does of course have a serious message behind it but that's not the case in Batman Forever, funny voices are one thing but keep them for the right type of movie.

On the research for this movie I noticed that there is a character named Bane, I presume that is the same bad guy from the latest offering of The Dark Knight Rises, if so then in the older movies people find out who Batman is (George Clooney by that point), I’m wondering if that reveal is in the updated Nolan version.

The Music

The music score is provided by Bono and his pals from U2, who in my opinion fit right in with this movie seeing as they are completely shit.

Would I watch it Again

Just in case the 700 or so words you have just read didn’t quite get my point across then the answer is a definite NO.