Franchise Friday: Batman Forever (1995)

Is this the worst Batman movie ever made?

Common thought is that Batman and Robin is the nadir of Batman’s time on screen. Joel Schumacher’s 1997 movie is a campy, ugly affair that gained infamy for its groan-inducing one-liners and turgid action sequences, and for putting nipples on the Batsuit. 

We’ll get to Batman and Robin next week, but I find it hard to believe it’s worse than Batman Forever, a loud, garish and deeply unpleasant experience. I honestly don’t know how Warner Brothers thought this neon-drenched atrocity was the right way to follow up Tim Burton’s gothic take.

And if you’re paying attention, Bat-nipples start here, less than five minutes into the film. 

A kids’ movie — but horny 

There’s not a plot here so much as a series of sequences in which the characters show up, recite a litany of one-liners at a volume far from what my daughter would call their “Inside Voice,” fight in badly blocked and absurdly edited  “action” sequences, or spend minutes trying to decipher riddles that sound like they came from a cereal box. There’s some nonsense about The Riddler (Jim Carrey, during that one year he was the biggest thing in Hollywood) trying to brainwash the world, Two Face (Tommy Lee Jones) trying to muck stuff up, young gymnast Dick Grayson (Chris O’ Donnell) coming to live with Bruce Wayne after his parents are murdered, and psychiatrist Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman), who came to Gotham only because of Bat-thirst. None of this really flows together so much as it collides and hiccups through the story, covering up the fact that it has nothing to say by screaming nonsense as loud as it can.   

Of course, it’s very obvious how the franchise swung from Burton’s Batman Returns to Schumacher’s kid show on acid. Batman Returns was a hit, but not on the size of its 1989 predecessor. It also had more in line with a horror movie than a superhero adventure. Notoriously, parents were not too thrilled with Happy Meals promoting a movie that featured Penguin gnawing off someone’s nose and plotting to murder Gotham’s first-born children (that type of story only draws in family crowds when it comes from the Bible). So, they went in another direction and brought in Schumacher, the director of The Lost Boys, Flatliners and The Client. His direction, as he’s revealed in subsequent interviews, was to make a family franchise that sold lots of toys. 

And, I guess that kind of explains why this movie is pitched at such a high volume, with one-dimensional villains who are crazy from the get-go, action sequences that feel pulled from a theme park stunt spectacular, and plastic-looking gadgets that could easily be reproduced and put on Wal-Mart shelves in time for Christmas. 

But it doesn’t explain why everyone in this movie is so horny. 

Seriously, for what is ostensibly a kids’ movie, everyone in this movie feels like they just want to find a dark corner of Gotham (pretty difficult given the ever-present neon), strip off their costumes and get it on. In her second scene, Kidman’s character commandeers the Bat Signal just to arrange a booty call. Chase then engages in a courtship with Bruce Wayne, unaware of course, that he’s the Batman she lusts for. Her entire character arc boils down to whether she wants to get it on with Batman or bang  Bruce Wayne, and it’s resolved when she realizes she gets to do both. Kidman is a highly talented actress who would go on to win an Academy Award. All I can say is that I hope she was paid handsomely; I feel embarrassed for her. 

But she’s not the only one thirsting in Gotham. When Dick Grayson hits the streets, the local prostitutes are excited to see the Batmobile pull up. He kisses the girl he rescues from what I presume was about to be a gang rape (she asks for the kiss, but still: read the room, Robin). Batman almost gives up the cowl just so he get hot and heavy with Chase (when he shows up to her apartment for said booty call, dressed in his costume, I had to wonder whether she intended for him to keep the mask on the whole time). And Carrey struts around like a horny teenager, screaming lines like “Spank me” and “joygasm” in a suit that leaves nothing to the imagination. 

I bring this all up not because I’m a prude, but because this is all in what is, by any other definition, a kids’ movie. While part of me wants to credit Schumacher with bringing a queer aesthetic to Batman (the Bat-nipples, Bat butt-shot, a notably phallic Batmobile), I can’t tell what was intentional and what was just “toss everything in.” The movie might have benefited from some sly, campy subtext. But when a movie’s too dumb to handle regular text, that’s probably giving it too much credit. 

 Ugly, unpleasant and loud 

The biggest news going into the release of Batman Forever was that the lead role would not be played by Michael Keaton, who left the franchise when Burton did, but by Val Kilmer. Kilmer was an interesting choice, an actor who can go comedic or heroic when called for, and there might actually be a universe where he was a solid choice for Batman. 

But here, the actor — who reportedly did not get along with Schumacher  — is a non-entity. There’s no personality to his Bruce Wayne, none of the aloofness and instability Keaton brought to the first Batman. He plays Batman the same way, never attempting to explore the dual nature of the character or explore the psychological anguish the screenplay pays lip service to. He’s too reserved to be bad, which is probably why Kilmer is often the one bright spot people point to in this movie, but in reality the only reason he escapes with his dignity is that he shuts up when everyone else is screaming. Which is always. 

There’s a famous story Jim Carrey’s told, I believe on Howard Stern’s show, in which he recounts meeting Tommy Lee Jones at a restaurant shortly before filming began. Carrey approached the elder actor and said how excited he was that they would be working together, to which the color trained from Jones’ face and he told Carrey “I hate you,” and “I cannot sanction your buffoonery” (a phrase I trot out from time to time). 

I think Jones protests too much, as he delivers what is likely the worst performance in his otherwise very respectable career. Like Kilmer, there’s a time in which Jones could have been an interesting Two Face. I could see a better film where he’s allowed to wrestle with his duality and pull between justice and lawlessness. Here, he’s a mugging villain, cackling, dancing and making exaggerated facial expressions. It’s more befitting a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers villain than the third lead in a major feature film. His makeup is a hideous purple nightmare, his lair a literal bifurcated mess. Two Face is an interesting character in that, like Batman, he wrestles with two natures. Handled with nuance, he can be effective. But there’s no nuance in Batman Forever, so instead everything is brain-bashingly literal. And speaking of horny, his lair also includes two slinky, scantily clad groupies played by Drew Barrymore and Debbie Mazar. Fun for the whole family! 

The only time Jones’ character seems subdued is when Carrey is on screen, and that’s only because the comedian charges into the movie with the intent of overpowering it. His Edward Nygma (::eyeroll emoji::) is unhinged from scene one, semi-stalking Bruce Wayne and then, in the next scene, murdering his boss (with quips to boot, naturally). Carrey is a skilled mimic, and I’m impressed with just how well he personifies fingernails on a chalkboard in every scene, turning each moment into a bad stand-up showcase. I get that he’s only matching the volume level of the entire film, and post-Ace Ventura and The Mask, this is exactly what he was hired to do. But it takes an already ugly and loud movie and cranks up the volume, and Carrey fully removes the film from whatever grounding it initially had (which, to be fair, was almost nonexistent). 

Everyone else in the movie is dead on arrival. Kidman tries to vamp it up but just flails with the non character. O’ Donnell is pretty much a wooden board in anything he’s in, and doesn’t fare any better here (his “holy rusted metal, Batman” moment never works because he can’t engage the camp). Everyone looks lost and frustrated, and probably with good reason: I don’t think they have any idea what kind of movie they’re in. 

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What is this? 

Not counting the serials, Batman Forever is the fifth feature-length movie about the Caped Crusader. Each previous film varies in quality, but each of them also find new angles of the character and universe to explore. The 1966 film follows the TV series’ penchant for campy fun and bringing what was then a poppy, colorful comic book to screens. Burton’s films probably have more in common with the director’s own pet themes and fetishes, but his gothic, psychologically heavy take on the character is consistent with the comic book. And the animated Mask of the Phantasm is a reverent exploration of Bruce Wayne’s psychology and Batman’s role as the World’s Greatest Detective. 

In Batman Forever, Schumacher’s familiarity with the character seems to be “he wears a mask and has weird villains.” Aside from the iconography, this could easily be a Dick Tracy sequel or a random action flick, although with the shoddy production design and cringeworthy dialogue, it actually just feels more like an amusement park stunt show. 

Sure, the movie pretends to continue Burton’s psychological exploration by literally making one of the characters a psychologist and tacking on some material about repressed memories (which means more of Bruce Wayne’s parents’ murder), but the movie isn’t really interested in exploring that (everything is resolved because Bruce Wayne decides he likes being Batman). Exploring Batman as a father figure is something film has done fairly poorly (Lego Batman is the only one to really do it), but the relationship between Bruce and Dick is more of a work partnership than anything. And the World’s Greatest Detective? When Bruce Wayne gets nasty riddles, his first thought is to take them to the police and then a psychiatrist. When you’re Batman, you don’t have to go anywhere! Even the idea of tension between Batman, the police and the citizens of Gotham is thrown out the window when there’s a sequence of Commissioner Gordon nearly dancing in joy because he sees Batman riding to the rescue. 

I guess there’s a case to be made that Schumacher is leaning into the campiness of the 1960s series. Aesthetically, maybe. The canted angles from the series (to suggest their “crookedness”) is in full play here, and the over-the-top traps and bright production design call to mind the series on a surface level. But camp is in the subtext, and like I said, the movie is too stupid for subtext. Likewise, camp only works if everyone plays it straight, but every single person here plays to the back rows of an arena. If Schumacher is attempting camp, he fails horribly. It’s never funny, fun or clever. It’s just loud, messy and unpleasant.

Batman Forever was, for some reason, a monstrous hit. It brought in $184 million at the domestic box office and was the number two film of the year, just under Toy Story. It sold its toys and it brought in its families. People seemed shocked when Batman and Robin crapped the bed two years later. But if they checked their ticket stubs from 1995, they’d learn exactly where this mess started.