Two Directors Create A Series That Becomes The Best Cinematic Example Of The Law Of Diminishing Returns: The Batman Anthology

The Good: The first two films are good, Val Kilmer is decent, Great DVD/Blu-Ray bonus features!
The Bad: Joel Schumacher’s works, Repetitive plots, Series inconsistencies, Even the good films have not agd particularly well
The Basics: With no consisted story or direction, the Batman movies of Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher make for an unfortunately inconsistent series that gets worse with each installment after a point.


With the recent end of the Dark Knight Trilogy (reviewed here!), the cinematic Batman franchise is once again in limbo. That is a state not entirely unfamiliar to Warner Bros., who owns the rights to the franchise and is the studio that produces all of the films based on DC Comics properties. With the abrupt end of the Batman movies of the 1990s, the franchise had to regroup and reboot. Before the powerful, thematically complex and decidedly adult The Dark Knight Trilogy, there were the Batman films of 1989 – 1997, now encapsulated in a boxed set known as Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989 – 1997.

Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989 – 1997 is an incredible example of what happens when a surprise hit becomes a lucrative cash cow for a studio and that cow is milked too frequently and too hard. It is also a prime example of what happens to a franchise when the creative teams behind the camera and the talent in front of the camera are not kept consistent (in The Dark Knight Trilogy only one performer was recast!) and the vision by the later forces working on the series is clearly an attempt to capitalize on the formula as opposed to build upon the story and prior successes. The result is that Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989 – 1997 is a film series that starts intriguing, rises well, and then steadily declines until its abrupt and painful crash.

Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989 – 1997 consists of the films:
Batman
Batman Returns
Batman Forever
and Batman & Robin. The first two are directed by Tim Burton, the latter two by Joel Schumacher and three different actors play Bruce Wayne/Batman over the course of the four films!

In Batman, a young Bruce Wayne witnesses his father and mother being killed by a mysterious assassin. As an adult, Bruce Wayne manages the giant company left to him by his father by day and at night, he takes up armor and a cape to dispense vigilante justice on the streets of Gotham City. As the press pushes the police to admit that the Batman exists, a local gangster is smoked during a robbery of a chemical factory that goes horribly wrong. However, when Batman accidentally lets the gangster fall into a vat of chemicals, the man is not killed, but rather transformed into a psychopathic killer. Waging a battle with chemical weapons, the Joker menaces Gotham City and threatens to undo all the good Batman is working for.

Batman Returns happens around Christmastime a short time later. Gotham City is hit with a crime wave from a gang of thugs who use old circus equipment. While Batman keeps them in check, he is not prepared for the city to have to deal with more threats. Those threats come in the form of a mysterious man, Oswald Cobblepot, who literally rises out of the sewers to save an abducted baby and a catburgler who seems bent on wreaking vengeance at night to make up for her unsatisfying daytime life (and the fact that her boss tried to kill her). While Bruce Wayne fends off a corporate attack from his rival, Max Shreck, he finds romance with Selena Kyle and it slowly begins to dawn on him that she is the same person as the mysterious Catwoman he fights at night. When Shreck uses Cobblepot as a pawn to take the mayor’s office, the fallout creates a villain who wants to kill all the firstborn of Gotham City.

Joel Schumacher took over behind the camera and Val Kilmer took on the role of Bruce Wayne in Batman Forever. In that, a demented former-District Attorney, Harvey Dent, begins a reign of terror and violence (focused on bank robberies) as the villainous Two-Face. Bruce Wayne’s problems are multiplied, though, when one of his employees creates a device that can drain the brains of the citizens of Gotham City and unlock all the secrets the people there have. As Batman squares off against Two-Face and the Riddler, he is aided by a forensic psychologist and a young acrobat who lost his parents and wants to fight crime as well . . . Robin.

George Clooney’s only outing in the cape and cowl comes in Batman & Robin where Batman and Robin are assisted by Alfred’s neice, who takes up the alter ego of Batgirl. The pair could use her help as they are bickering over how to take down the formidable Mr. Freeze and they fall under the love spell-style charms of Poison Ivy and her thug, Bane.

To his credit, Tim Burton’s two outings – in addition to being appropriately weird (as one expects from Tim Burton’s works) – have larger themes. Batman explores crime and the nature of justice vs. the pitfalls of revenge and Batman Returns has a great deal about empowering women and the snares of political corruption. Unfortunately, by the time Batman Forever comes up, the writers and director are working for big action, flamboyant villains, and star power, as opposed to trying to create films of substance. This is not to say that Tim Burton got everything right in his two films. While the miniatures look great, even by today’s standards, Batman is surprisingly slow and the focus on the Joker is far less compelling in-context of Batman’s story than it is as a stand-alone film.

That said, it is almost inarguable that Tim Burton helped effectively usher in the youth culture mindset of the 1990s with Batman and then the even more violent Batman Returns. The two films created a nihilistic sense of the world; crime ran rampant and the victories were more ambiguous than celebratory and the hero uses many of the same methods as the villains, just with nobler purpose.

Val Kilmer was not a bad choice to replace Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne and Batman and he had the physical presence to pull off the dual roles more plausibly than Keaton, who played the part of Bruce Wayne as more goofy than gallant. Kilmer, however, was saddled with a particularly weak script with Batman Forever and a film that was intended to be a Jim Carrey vehicle and ended up disappointing on so many fronts. Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever also prioritized casting (the entire series has pretty impressive guest cast members from the major – Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Michelle Pfeiffer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey, Uma Thurman and Arnold Schwarzenegger – to the supporting players who flesh out surprisingly minor roles – Kim Bassinger, Robert Wuhl, Christopher Walken, Drew Barrymore, John Glover, Vivica A. Fox) over fidelity to the series thus far. To wit, in Batman, Harvey Dent was played by Billy Dee Williams and in Batman Forever he is recast with Tommy Lee Jones. It takes a lot more than an acid bath from a mobster to make Billy Dee Williams into Tommy Lee Jones!

The epitome of Schumacher’s obsession with star power and spectacle over substance is in Batman & Robin. There, Arnold Schwarzenegger appears as Mr. Freeze, a character written with a thin backstory surrounding his attempts to cure his wife (who is in suspended animation), but is executed as a character constructed almost entirely of catchphrases. To wit, his big monologue from the film’s trailer, where he introduces himself as a threat to Gotham City appears in the film’s middle, after he is incarcerated, when he introduces himself to two people (his jailers) who know exactly who he is! It is this type of stupidity that shook the series and almost gutted this franchise.

Performances in the Batman movies in this set are generally good. Michael Keaton is an intriguing Bruce Wayne and he pulled off the action sequences for Batman better than most might have suspected. Jack Nicholson performed opposite him in Batman with a flamboyancy and menace that worked beautifully to define the character of the Joker. Danny DeVito gives one of his most underrated performances as Oswald Cobblepot (the Penguin) and Michelle Pfeiffer and Keaton had great on-screen chemistry in Batman Returns. While Val Kilmer and Chris O’Donnell did fine as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, George Clooney seemed unusually stiff when he took up the mantle in Batman & Robbin. The less said about Jim Carrey, Uma Thurman, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the better.

On DVD and Blu-Ray, the Batman Anthology is chock full of goodies. There are extensive featurettes on the production of the films, from concept designs through casting and the bonus features provide a wealth of insight into how moviemaking was done, especially at the birth of CG effects. Fans of Batman may want to champion the whole series, but given how most people will only watch bonus featurettes once, the full Batman Anthology is hardly worth investing in. Tim Burton’s works might be worth picking up, but Joel Schumacher’s outings oscillate between the disappointing and the outright insulting.

For other live-action DC superhero works, please check out my reviews of:
Green Lantern
Jonah Hex
Watchmen
Superman Returns
Catwoman
Batman & Robin
Supergirl
Superman
Wonder Woman

3.5/10

For other film reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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The West Wing Without The Charm: House Of Cards Season One Simmers!

The Good: Good plot progression, Moments of character, Good performances
The Bad: Unimpressive narrative technique, Universally unlikable characters, Very much more plot-driven than character driven
The Basics: Netflix makes good television with characters who are virtually impossible to care about with the first season of House Of Cards.


When it comes to political television shows, it is hard to do better than The West Wing (reviewed here!). From the very first episode, there were characters to care about: principled people who actually stood for something. And there was a poetry to the language used in the show. It always sounded so pretentious to me to hear the writers and actors talk about Aaron Sorkin’s sense of poetry – the music to his language in his shows – until I sat down to watch the new Netflix series House Of Cards. House Of Cards trades in the poetry and idealism of The West Wing for the coldness of reality.

In fact, that is what drags down the entire first season of House Of Cards, something that gets worse as the season goes on: the main characters do not actually stand for anything. It is easy to enjoy tales of political intrigue – even when they lack a Sorkian sense of poetry, music, and orchestration – but to do so without characters that have any meaningful or apparent motivation is just oppressive and depressing to watch. The main characters only seem to want power, control, and influence, but why they want it is never made clear. As a result, there is a consistent, nihilistic quality to House Of Cards and it makes it impossible to emotionally invest in the characters.

Having hung his political fortunes on the coattails of President-elect Walker, House Majority Whip Francis Underwood is screwed over by the new Administration, who had promised him the position of Secretary Of State. As they begin a massive education overhaul, Underwood is kept in his position in Congress. More than irked by the broken promises, Francis starts maneuvering the people he wants into the positions to push his own agendas and initiatives opposite those of Walker. As Underwood brokers for power, he starts using a young journalist to expose the vulnerabilities of his political enemies.

After leaking an education bill to Zoe, he gets control over the President’s first big promised initiative. When one of his colleagues is caught whoring around, Francis uses Russo to continue to discredit the President’s nominee for Secretary Of State and then replace the nominee with one he supports. Underwood sees the President’s first initiative, the education bill, as a way to broker real power and he sets off a war between organized labor and the President that puts him in a position to solve the problem and advance. This comes as Russo goes clean and Underwood begins using him to run for Governor of Pennsylvania, a role the Vice President left vacant. But, when Underwood’s plans run into conflict with his wife’s ambitions and the goals of her charity, she sandbags his best opportunity to get Russo elected, setting off a chain of events which put Francis in line to become Vice President as Zoe and her colleagues begin digging into the trail of evidence that might discredit him once and for all!

The fundamental problem with the first season of House Of Cards is that none of it matters. The viewer is not invested in whether Francis Underwood succeeds in his political machinations or whether he fails outright and is exposed. The quest for power is not, as evidenced by the thirteen episode first season of House Of Cards, eminently satisfying to watch in its own right. Francis Underwood falls into a category that is, unfortunately, reserved for the worst of the monolithic villains in film and literature: he is a man who wants to rule the world . . . without any clear reason why. By this point in adult programming, it is hard not to have a villain who understands that being the obvious ruler of the world comes with a lot of responsibilities and hassles that those who want real power are usually smart enough to avoid. In other words, when House Of Cards begins, Francis Underwood is actually in the ideal position for one who has the stated goals he has: he is the power behind the throne, the manipulator who truly runs the country while others take credit for it. So, why does he upset that for the title and being the target when he starts with the power and the relative safety of having no one gunning for him? The first season does not make that at all clear and that is frustrating; it feels far less sophisticated than the rest of the show attempts to be.

As for the “stated goals” of Francis Underwood, that is another serious problem with the first season of House Of Cards. While House Of Cards avoids the annoying conceit of voiceovers to deliver exposition, frequently Francis Underwood speaks directly to camera to tell the viewer his thoughts, explain the plot machinations, or sermonize on the themes of the episode. I am of the mind that if viewers are smart enough to appreciate the dark political machinations of House Of Cards, they should be able to “get” what is going on and understand that Francis is just playing everyone for his own reasons.

But that, too, is a serious problem with having Francis be an strangely apolitical character, despite using politics as his means to power. Francis completely embodies the old Will Rogers idea of being a Democrat and, therefore, not belonging to an organized political party: House Of Cards has Francis fighting his own people. The adversary in House Of Cards is always other Democrats and that makes Francis Underwood pretty much the worst, most short-sighted Democrat of all time. How he is even considered a Democrat – other than having a swinger relationship with his wife and a past homosexual relationship with a friend in the military – is one of the greatest mysteries of the season. He does not stand for the environment, he does not stand for workers rights, and he is distinctly anti-labor. How is Francis Underwood a Democrat?! [This may be a deficiency in that House Of Cards is based on a UK work and if it is, it represents a severe problem with adapting the British series for the United States – in other words, the Executive Producers failed to actually adapt it to the U.S. political landscape.]

Despite the severe deficiencies in the characters, there are some admirable aspects of House Of Cards. Francis Underwood and his wife, Claire, have a generally mature relationship. They talk about their plans, their machinations; they are the original power couple. They are honest (at the outset) about their affairs and they see their affairs and they way they manipulate the emotions of others as a means unto their own ends.

Unfortunately, some of the characters are not as well-defined. Doug Stamper, especially, is a problematic character. Stamper is Francis’s right-hand man and he is the executor of Francis’s will and many of his plans. But, he is also a character who is presented without a soul. Is he a recovering alcoholic? Maybe. His alcoholism comes up only in the context of Russo and is used to get Russo into meetings. Was he an alcoholic before that? Maybe. But, knowing Francis, it seems equally possible that Stamper simply plays as a man in recovery in order to play and monitor Russo. After all, it seems deeply troubling that an addict in recovery would be willing to entrap a man who has been flying on the straight and narrow, using his vices, only to advance the next temporary plan of his boss. Similarly, one of Stamper’s closest-to-redeeming actions is to take in Russo’s prostitute, Rachel. After preventing Rachel from continuing to extort Russo, Underwood and himself, he goes to great lengths to rehabilitate the girl. Yet, when it is convenient, he pushes her right back into that role and she willingly goes along with it.

No, there are no good characters in House Of Cards that the viewer will want to root for the whole season. (Peter Russo actually becomes the character viewers want to see go clean and survive, arguably because he seems to be on the road for redemption and the viewer wants to see him get out from under Underwood’s thumb!)

In the first season, the essential characters in House Of Cards are:

Francis Underwood – Ruthless and efficient, he is deeply upset by being passed over and decides to become the true power behind the new Administration. As such, he sandbags the President’s first Secretary Of State nominee and gets his ally installed in his place. He then takes control of the Education Bill in order to imperil and then save the Presidency. He orchestrates Peter Russo’s gubernatorial campaign and, adapting to his wife sandbagging him on that, creates a situation that will allow him to advance further up the political ladder,

Claire Underwood – Approaching menopause, she runs the Clean Water Initiative, a non-profit whose finances have been dependent upon money coming from a corporate interest Francis arranged. But when SanCorp’s goals and the Clean Water Initiative’s diverge, Francis risks some political capital during the teacher’s strike to help. But, when his help is not sufficient, Claire goes to Remy behind Francis’s back and pursues her own agenda. That causes a rift between her and Francis, which leads her back into the arms of a photographer who has long loved her,

Zoe Barnes – A young journalist for The Washington Herald, she is eager to get work in print. She starts using Francis for access to get dirt on politicians to publish. Francis passes juicy stories through her and uses her to ruin his political enemies. After she leaves the newspaper and starts working for the online newsmagazine Slugline, she and Francis experience both personal and professional torsion. Unwilling to be controlled by Francis, she strikes out on her own and starts to aid her friend and co-worker, Janine, in creating the paper trail that might ruin Francis,

Doug Stamper – Francis’s right hand man, he executes Francis’s will,

Peter Russo – A drug addict and whoremonger, he is pulled over with a prostitute one night. Francis sees Russo’s weakness as a way to manipulate the Congressman and rescues him . . . for a price. After turning his life around, he begins to run for Governor of Pennsylvania, but when he begins to strike out on his own and tries to make his own deal with SanCorp, he is cut loose by Francis,

Christina Gallager – Russo’s most loyal ally, she seems to genuinely love him despite his faults. After taking a job with the Speaker Of The House, she is lured back into Russo’s life as his campaign manager,

Linda Vasquez – The President’s Chief Of Staff, she owes her job to Francis. Her son fails to get into Stanford, which Francis is able to manipulate in order to keep her owing him favors,

and Remy Danton – The protégé of Francis, he now works in the private sector for SanCorp. From there, he exerts influence over almost as many members of Congress as Francis does! He displays independence from Francis and also seems to know and understand all of Francis’s plans and machinations.

On the acting front, House Of Cards is very good, though it is playing with a stacked deck. With the main cast including the likes of Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright and Mahershala Ali, it would be hard for the cast not to perfectly embody each of the characters they play. In fact, the only note on acting worth making is on the casting of Michael Gill. Gill plays President Walker and he might well be the least convincing American President on television in years. Characters playing the U.S. President have to have some ability to portray a realistic gravitas that makes it plausible that they could have ascended so high; Gill utterly fails to do that. Even Dan Ziskie’s Vice President Matthews is much more plausible as the former governor of Pennsylvania.

As it stands, House Of Cards is entertaining, but in a soap opera way. If Netflix stops streaming it and puts it on DVD, it will not be a must-buy the way The West Wing was.

For other works with Kate Mara, please visit my reviews of:
Peep World
Iron Man 2
Zoom: Academy For Super Heroes
Brokeback Mountain

6/10

For other television reviews, please be sure to check out my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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What Exactly Is Wrong With Batman & Robin?

The Good: Alicia Silverstone is fine, Clooney does okay, Moments of Michael Gough’s performance and Alfred’s character.
The Bad: Most of the acting, Terrible special effects, Atrocious writing, Crappy characters, Predictable plot
The Basics: Batman & Robin is easily one of the worst films of all time.


Every now and then, I try to experience something I previously experienced and did not enjoy. I like to see if the thing was as bad as I recall it being or if it was just a reaction at the time. So, for example, watching Zoolander (reviewed here!) with my wife, years after panning it, I probably did not hate it as much as I originally did. One of the first films I reviewed, back when I was writing for my college newspaper as a reviewer, was Batman & Robin. I remember it being unspeakably bad and my review rated it as such.

So, I took the flick in again, fifteen years later, to see if it was just horrible on the big screen or if, now that I have a more refined palate and standards, it was still just rotten. It was.

In fact, Batman & Robin is so bad that I can’t muster up the enthusiasm to go through one of my usual reviews of the film. The only things that really grabbed me about the movie were Alicia Silverstone (and if you just want Silverstone, there are plenty of pictures online or other, vastly better, films she is in to enjoy her actual acting ability) and a few moments of Michael Gough’s performance as Alfred. Unfortunately, though, it is also Gough who sets the pace for the movie. One of the first lines in the film is Alfred saying that he’ll have to cancel the pizza order and Gough rolls his eyes while delivering the line. It is very much as if Gough knew it was a shit line and he would be going through the motions of saying any of them throughout the film.

So, rather than go through the usual plot, character, acting, and special effects analysis of the film, I decided that I would just list the twenty-five most preposterous things in Batman & Robin. Enjoy!

25. Every line of Mr. Freeze’s sounds like a lame attempt to make an “Hasta la vista . . . baby”-style catch phrase,

24. During the proposal scene, George Clooney looks like he is reading his lines off a note on his lap,

23. Bane has no character or character development,

22. Poor John Glover! One of the most talented villain character actors appears as a ridiculous mad scientist and doesn’t pull it off convincingly,

21. Of all the characters to recur, the fact that the social newsmagazine hostess comes back is ridiculous,

20. Commissioner Gordon’s outfit makes him look more like a third world dictator than a police commissioner,

19. After the claim is made that Bruce has been dating his current woman “forever,” when she proposes, she says they have been together a year. Even for tabloids, a year is hardly “forever,”

18. Alfred ill and dying has more color in his cheeks and skin than Alfred healthy. What the hell?! Is he a reverse vampire?!,

17. Coolio has an even worse role than he does in Daredevil,

16. The computer voice changes from a stiff, mechanical computer voice into a pornstar voice when Barbara gets access to the file Alfred made,

15. Bruce Wayne witnesses Pamela Isley at a party in her mundane form when she could easily be apprehended, but does nothing,

14. Gotham’s newsmedia must be absolutely terrible. After multiple attacks and his apprehension, when Mr. Freeze attacks the observatory, one scientist has no idea who he is and the other’s solution to seeing a guy with a big freeze gun come in is to scream in comic horror. Yeah, most of the supplemental characters in this film are idiots,

13. Mr. Freeze refers to himself consistently as a villain, yet is supposed to be motivated by love,

12. Poison Ivy’s grand plan to save the plant world is to kill all of it, except her ridiculous mutants. This is not just a crazy or stupid idea, it completely nullifies what little characterization there is for the character,

11. Mr. Freeze’s henchmen are about a thousand times more ridiculous than the Penguin’s penguins,

10. After trying to get by most of the movie by performing Bruce Wayne with only his amazing smile, George Clooney gets into one of the stiffest cinematic arguments with Chris O’Donnell ever when he insists he will go after the villains alone,

9. When Barbara is hanging off the bridge, it is one of the absolute worst bluescreen shots of all time,

8. Batgirl is used to take out Poison Ivy so none of the guys punch a woman in the face,

7. The car race scene over the giant statues look like a bunch of Matchbox cars driving on a miniature,

6. The mutant plants of Poison Ivy’s are exactly what they look like: cheap puppets,

5. The introduction of Poison Ivy at the charity event is supposed to be erotic, but is executed as preposterous and anything but titillating (which is hard to do when the director is pretty much assraping Uma Thurmond with the camera,

4. Robin waits for Poison Ivy to blow her dust in his nose/mouth not once, but twice!,

3. The freeze ray special effect is so bad it looks just like what one assumes would be used in the porn parody of the film,

2. The giant statues in Gotham City have no real-world application, except to be driven over for action sequences,

1. All of the writing seems like it was done on cocktail napkins and given to the actors moments before they had to deliver each line.

There are more, but I cannot muster up the enthusiasm to waste my time writing them down.

For other live-action DC superhero works, please check out my reviews of:
The Dark Knight Trilogy
Green Lantern
Jonah Hex
Watchmen
Superman Returns
Catwoman
Batman
Supergirl
Wonder Woman

0.5/10

For other film reviews, check out my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Musicals Of Darkness, Desire and Disfigurements: The Phantom Of The Opera

The Good: Great singing, orchestration, costumes
The Bad: Garbled audio in several scenes, Most characters don't "pop," Plot technique removes menace
The Basics: Worth watching for Emmy Rossum's magnificent voice and performance, The Phantom Of The Opera is otherwise a startlingly average tale of love and obsession.


I think the reason most horror movies do not play with narrative technique is that it keeps the viewer wondering who lives and who dies in a story. It's hard to have menace when the story is told in flashback by one of the characters. In fact, one of the few drawbacks of the show Carnivale (reviewed here!) is that the series begins as a story told by one of the characters, who looks noticeably older. So, no matter the menace, the viewer knows the apocalypse does not come and no matter how severe the bloodbath, we know one character who never perishes. In a similar way, The Phantom Of The Opera mortgages elements of menace because the story is a flashback wherein one of the surviving characters attempts to recapture moments of his past by purchasing a chandelier.

Christine is an opera singer whose talents are hidden in the shadows as her career is dwarfed by the diva Carlotta. When new managers buy the Paris Opera House, Christine's career is given a boost by a mysterious figure who live beneath the theater, who insists that the new owners give Christine the lead part in a new opera. Christine performs, and quite superbly, attracting the eye of Raoul, and the ire of Carlotta. Carlotta returns so Christine may not continue to steal the spotlight, which irks the Phantom of the Opera (Christine's mysterious tutor). Hoping to divide Christine and Raoul, the Phantom attempts to seduce Christine, the pupil he has fallen in love with, and chaos ensues.

And the viewer just keeps waiting for that chandelier to make its entrance.

The Phantom Of The Opera is based upon the musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and it, too, is a musical. That means during most of the important character moments and times when characters are relating to one another, they break out into song as opposed to just talking with one another. It's a pretty solid musical.

The decent thing about The Phantom Of The Opera as a musical is that it's a decent musical. The music is good, the tunes are operatic, grand and memorable. The style is a fusion of classic opera and pop-rock, giving the piece a sense of being timeless while still appealing to younger audiences. There are recognizable tracks like "The Music of the Night" and the theme to The Phantom Of The Opera and they are well performed in this outing.

Much of the film has to be judged on the music and in this regard, director Joel Schumacher - whose work I have traditionally not enjoyed - chose well in his casting. Gerard Butler, who plays the Phantom, has a magnificent voice and it is used well in this film. He is paired with Emmy Rossum, who I first noticed in Songcatcher. Rossum's voice is exceptional and in this presentation of The Phantom Of The Opera, she is able to explore the depth and breadth of her vocal abilities and she shines brightly.

Emmy Rossum steals every scene she is in and not only because she is magnificently costumed, which she is. Rossum, whose parts have generally been smaller than this - she does not last long in Mystic River, for example - but here she clearly proves her worth. She creates a distinctive, viable, articulate and empathetic character through her portrayal of Christine. It is her performance that invests the viewer in caring what happens in the movie and Christine becomes the only memorable or intriguing character in the movie based on Rossum's acting.

That is saying quite a bit when you have a movie with so many intricate machinations, including a disfigured guy living in possibly the most cinematic sewer of all time.

Truth be told, though, there is little else to recommend The Phantom Of The Opera, though it is worth mentioning that the direction is decent. Schumacher uses the camera to focus on angles, perspectives and views that could not be captured by watching a stage performance. Wisely, Schumacher makes a visual feast out of The Phantom Of The Opera with lush sets, extraordinary costumes and a sense of movement that establishes a world that feels cinematic, rather than theatrical. This is easily the best directed Schumacher film I've yet seen.

Sadly, though, the film has some of the same limitations as the play. The Phantom of the Opera mortgages any sympathy the viewer might have for him through his villainy and Raoul is pretty much a generic good-looking guy who the audience is supposed to think is a better choice for Christine. The truth is, Christine and her friend Meg have more on-screen chemistry and more binding them than Christine and Raoul. The plot here takes precedence over genuine character development or real sensibilities.

Instead, this is plotted like a very average musical and essentially tells the simple romantic narrative that has been told and retold from Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte on. Writers Gaston Leroux, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher add nothing new to the essential story of a woman who has two men to choose between.

But, at least they make it look good. And it sounds good. And if you can't create something genuinely new, the least you can do is make an illusion of it that hints at originality. This does that, at the very least.

For other works with Patrick Wilson, please check out my reviews of:
The Switch
The A-Team
Watchmen
Passengers

6/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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I Revisit The Average Batman Forever.

The Good: Val Kilmer is convincing as Bruce Wayne and Batman, Moments of concept, Good two-disc version.
The Bad: Overbearing soundtrack, Jim Carrey, Awkward use of Tommy Lee Jones.
The Basics: A decent, but fairly average, cinematic adventure, Batman Forever fleshes out the Batman movie franchise with a Jim Carrey vehicle.


In the process of combining our DVD collections, my wife and I have found interesting overlaps and a huge number of differences in our tastes. So, for example, when it comes to the Batman franchise, neither of us have Tim Burton's original Batman reinterpretation, though I have Batman Returns (reviewed here!) and The Dark Knight (reviewed here!). My wife moved in with Batman Forever and Batman Begins and we promised each other we would never be so bored as to get in Batman & Robin. So, the other night, when she wanted to watch Batman Forever, I sat with her, not recalling why it was I had not ever gotten it in myself.

Shortly after the film began, I remembered exactly why I had not been grabbed by Batman Forever enough to own it. While Val Kilmer made for a very convincing Bruce Wayne and Batman - Michael Keaton was arguably a far more convincing Wayne - Batman Forever is essentially a Jim Carrey vehicle and his part in the movie is so over-the-top and ridiculous as to ruin it for me. Indeed, perhaps the biggest strike against Batman Forever would be the tacit connection between intelligence and absurdity. For some stupid reason no one in the film ever manages to explain, as Edward Nygma becomes more intelligent, he becomes more ridiculous and flamboyant. The connection is not at all made clear and the result is a pair of villains plaguing Batman who are less compelling than they ought to be.

As Bruce Wayne maintains control of his global empire during the day, he assumes the mantle of Batman to keep Gotham City safe at night. He is plagued, though, by Two-Face, a former ally who was wounded and now is demented and bent on revenge. As Two-Face robs Gotham City blind and Police Commissioner Gordon calls in a psychiatric specialist (Dr. Chase Meridian), Batman's problems multiply. A disgruntled worker at Wayne Enterprises, Edward Nygma, develops a technology that allows him to read the minds of others though a holographic entertainment system he was working on. Rejected by Wayne, Nygma hatches a plan to use the side effect from his entertainment system to acquire wealth and power to rival Bruce Wayne in Gotham City.

As Wayne and Meridian grow closer, Two-Face sets off a bomb which claims the life of Dick Grayson's parents. Grayson, bent on revenge, is taken in by Wayne and soon discovers that Wayne is Batman. This comes at an inopportune moment as Two-Face and Nygma, who has assumed the persona of the supervillain the Riddler, team up to wreak havoc on Gotham City. As Wayne tries to prevent Grayson from traveling down the same road he did - to become a vigilante of his own - Grayson rebels and Batman gets a new ally, Robin.

Batman Forever feels like exactly what it is, a sequel in a strong franchise that is struggling to keep itself fresh. The introduction of Robin is in many ways necessary to retain the suspension of disbelief in the Batman character, but far too many of the ideas rehashed in the film are cliche. Just as Batman Returns brought in a villain for both Wayne and Batman, while juggling a neutral romantic interest, Batman Forever evolved Nygma from Wayne's adversary into Batman's when Nygma becomes the Riddler. With the addition of Grayson, the screen gets a bit crowded by the presence of Chase Meridian. Here, the female lead becomes thoroughly cliche as this marks the third woman in a row who becomes interested in Wayne and comes to learn his deep, dark secret. How did Bruce Wayne ever keep his identity secret for the years before the first Batman film?!

To say that it is the character of Two-Face that suffers as a result is a tough concept to sell. Batman Forever uses Two-Face as the primary villain, as he appears, wreaks havoc and pops up at random intervals to cause more mayhem. But the thing about this version of Two-Face, already established by the story's beginning, is that he never evolves, he does not develop, there is no arc. Instead, Two-Face begins as a split-personality bank robber and he ends the same way. Why is he robbing Gotham? This is not so much delved into as glossed over. Two-Face is simply an agent of chaos.

The problematic aspect of Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face is that he is over-the-top in a way that makes one instantly think he is trying to mimic Jack Nicholson's incarnation of the Joker, but simply changing "I's" to "we's." This take on Two-Face would have been entirely watchable and enjoyable . . . were it not for Jim Carrey's Riddler. Carrey plays the Riddler two ways, the first is as if actor Matthew Frewer were playing the role, the remainder as Jim Carrey, flamboyant physical comedian. And no, there is no correlation between Nygma's brain draining and the sudden looseness the Riddler gets to his body language.

Of course, the obvious take on the Riddler would be that as his i.q. begins to exponentially grow, he develops a personality disorder . . . much like Two-Face, but instead, he devolves into an immature psychopath. Here one has to wonder why the Riddler chooses to be this way, as there are plenty of scenes after he begins to grow his i.q. where Nygma passes as normal. Jim Carrey's acting is nothing to laud here.

But Chris O'Donnell and Val Kilmer both do fairly well, with O'Donnell adding a very basic humanity to the character of Grayson/Robin that Kilmer's Batman too often lacks. Kilmer is well-cast. He makes sense for the playboy bachelor Bruce Wayne much the way Christian Bale does now in the Nolan Batman movies. Moreover, director Joel Schumacher made a good choice for an athletic enough guy to plausibly be Batman. But Kilmer is aloof in the role and he does not carry the full weight of his charisma in key moments (like when Batman realizes Meridian has fallen for Bruce Wayne and he smiles).

O'Donnell, though, is anything but stiff as Grayson and he makes the role work. O'Donnell plays the role of Dick Grayson with a focus and intensity that makes it believable that he has lost his parents and is consumed with burying their killer.

But where the casting does work, the direction seldom does. Schumacher uses a soundtrack that is frequently overbearing and at the same time less memorable than Elfman's earlier scores. Similarly, visually the film seems more sedate than Burton's gloomy vision of Gotham City. Outside the Riddler sequences, the movie is dark and serious in an unrelenting way that is hard to find entertaining and ultimately, the oppressive atmosphere makes the film feel more drab than genuinely moody.

On the two-disc version, there are plenty of decent bonus features, like a commentary track and featurettes aplenty about the making of the movie. In a very slim "recommend," Batman Forever's bonus features lift it to the point where it is worth seeing, but a tough sell on buying and rewatching as part of one's permanent collection.

For other Batman reviews, please check out:
Batman Daredevil King Of New York
Knightfall Volume One: Broken Bat By Doug Moench and Chuck Dixon
Knightfall Volume Two: Who Rules The Night By Chuck Dixon
Knightfall Volume Three: Kightsend By Chuck Dixon
Batman R.I.P. By Grant Morrison

5/10

For other film reviews, please click here to visit my index page on the subject!

© 2011, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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