In a sentenceJim Carrey gets the film he wanted, Val Kilmer gets the rubber suit, and nobody gets a plot
Gotham City. Bruce Wayne (Val Kilmer) is Batman, and Harvey Dent (Tommy Lee Jones), the former district attorney now calling himself Two-Face, robs a bank, locks a guard in the vault and hoists the vault out of the building to draw him out; he decides everything on the toss of a scarred coin. At Wayne Enterprises, an engineer called Edward Nygma (Jim Carrey) pitches Bruce a box that beams television into the brain, is turned down, and takes it badly. Dr. Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman), a psychologist brought in to profile Two-Face, is more interested in the man in the cape. When Two-Face attacks a circus, a young acrobat, Dick Grayson (Chris O’Donnell), loses his family, and Bruce takes him into Wayne Manor, where Alfred (Michael Gough) keeps the house.
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Joel Schumacher turns Gotham up to neon, hands the film to Jim Carrey and leaves Val Kilmer standing about in rubber. It is bright, quick and often funny for an hour, and then it is merely loud.
Joel Schumacher takes over Gotham from Tim Burton, who stays on as producer, and the first thing he does is turn the lights on. Burton’s Gotham was black at night; Schumacher’s is green, pink and orange, with something always moving in the fog. The script, by Lee Batchler, Janet Scott Batchler and Akiva Goldsman, hands him two villains, a sidekick, a love interest and a psychologist to explain the hero, and 121 minutes to fit them in. The result is quick, bright and often funny for an hour, and then it is merely loud, and we came out knowing a good deal about the Riddler and almost nothing about Batman.
Jim Carrey is the reason it works when it works. His Edward Nygma is a Wayne Enterprises engineer who has built a box that beams television into the brain, and the scene in which he pitches it to Bruce Wayne, lurching a step closer with every sentence while Bruce backs towards the door, is the best thing here. We laughed, properly, more than once; Carrey plays a man who has rehearsed this meeting in the mirror for years and cannot stop even as it goes wrong. Later, in the green suit with the question marks, he does the same act at twice the volume, and by the third time we had stopped laughing and started counting.
Barbara Ling’s production design is the other reason. Her Gotham is a city of giant statues, stone men holding up bridges, with a neon tube fixed to every surface. Stephen Goldblatt shoots it tilted and steaming and lights the faces in whatever colour the nearest sign happens to be, so half the cast look faintly seasick. It is a comic strip and it says so. When the Batmobile, its wheels glowing blue, drives up the side of a building, we had no complaint.
Bob Ringwood and Ingrid Ferrin’s suits are part of the same joke, and the film opens on them, in close-ups of rubber sliding over rubber, nipples included. Val Kilmer is inside, and he is fine. He plays Bruce as a quiet, well-mannered man with something on his mind, and the script gives him a recovered memory, a psychologist and little else. Nicole Kidman’s Dr. Chase Meridian arrives on a rooftop to tell Batman she fancies him, and the two of them then repeat the information at each other in different lighting for an hour and a half. Kilmer is the calmest thing in the film and the film treats him as furniture.
Tommy Lee Jones has the harder job and does not manage it. His Two-Face is a coin, a half-purple suit and a lair split down the middle, one side sunny with Drew Barrymore’s Sugar in it and the other black with Debi Mazar’s Spice, and Jones fills all of it by shouting. Next to Carrey it looks like competition rather than a performance. Chris O’Donnell’s Dick Grayson is introduced with some care, a circus boy who has lost everything and wants to hit somebody, and is then hurried into tights. Michael Gough’s Alfred gets the only two quiet scenes in the film and is the better for it.
The cutting does the rest of the damage. Mark Stevens and Dennis Virkler run the fights as a blur of cape and neon, and there is not one set piece in which we could have told you where Batman stood in relation to the man he was hitting. Elliot Goldenthal’s score is brass, choir and circus drums, and it keeps announcing an arrival that never quite happens. The second half goes to places we will not describe. By then we were tired, in a film this bright and this fast, which takes some doing, and then faintly cross about it, because the first hour had promised something with a shape.
Set against Burton’s Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), this tells its story more clearly and has less to say; it is closer to the 1960s television series than to anything Burton made. Most critics are split down the middle, and we sit where the split is, admiring Carrey and the sets and unable to say what the film thinks about anyone in it.
The 12 certificate is about right, and so is the audience it implies. Put it on for a twelve-year-old and they will have a good evening. Sit beside them and you will enjoy the first hour, admire the sets, and spend the rest wondering where the man in the title went.
The critics split almost evenly, and the divide runs partly along the calendar: the 1995 notices are cool, the later reappraisals warmer. The praise clusters around pace and look. Several find it faster and funnier than Burton’s films, and the neon comic-book production design is admired even by critics who dislike the result. Jim Carrey’s Riddler is the performance most often singled out, with Val Kilmer’s Bruce Wayne judged charming or at least acceptable.
The reservations concern what all that colour is for. Many find the film loud and overloaded, with a perfunctory plot, overacting villains and a Batman who is never properly defined. The spread is wide. Den of Geek calls it the point where the rot set in for the series and objects to the addition of Robin, while Collider and Polygon argue it is underrated, Polygon adding that it is closer to the comics than Burton’s films.
The critic finds it the funniest and fastest in the series thanks to its brisk pace and stylish effects, making for enjoyable popcorn entertainment despite shifting from the darker tone of previous films.
Read the full review →The critic calls it an enjoyably camp iteration with a buff Val Kilmer as Batman. The film is noted for being a little wackier than its predecessors, perhaps closer to the 1960s TV version.
Read the full review →The review sees Schumacher's take as flawed yet brilliant and messy but impressive, a camp Bat-flick that hasn't aged well. It praises the villainous double-act especially Carrey's energetic Riddler and the comic-book visuals, but criticizes the lack of restraint, plot logic, and cohesive characterisation.
Read the full review →Ebert finds the film visually striking with clever one-liners and irreverence toward the material but notes that Batman remains undefined and the villains overact, making the spectacle wearying. He calls it good bubblegum for the eyes and lighter than prior entries, though the great Batman movie is still to come.
Read the full review →The critic finds the film wholly boring and cynical, lacking the vision of Burton's entries despite better storytelling and brighter visuals. Schumacher replaces gothic gloom with commercial canniness, and while some performances and production design impress, the overall result is visual overload without narrative drive.
Read the full review →Maslin views the film as an empty-calorie product focused on spectacle and gimmicks rather than cinematic merit, with flashy but messy direction that panders to teens. She notes Val Kilmer makes an acceptable Batman but highlights unwanted innovations like nipples on the suit.
Read the full review →
811992 · The film this one was reacting against: darker, stranger, and with a penguin army.
1990 · Warren Beatty’s comic strip in primary colours, with villains who wear their faces as masks.
1966 · The camp this film reaches for, done with a straight face and shark repellent.
1968 · Mario Bava’s Italian pop-art thief: neon, gadgets and a lair, on a fraction of the money.
1993 · The animated feature that takes Bruce Wayne seriously, which this film never quite manages.
