Reviews

Ever wonder why Burton was fired from the Batfilms? Watch this cinematic abortion. A penguin that drips chocolate syrup out his nose and eats raw fish. A "circus gang" that's campier than anything Adam West ever conceived of. A poodle lady and a batarang fetching poodle. Is Batman in this? Oh yeah, for like two seconds. Except this Batman is the worst hand to hand fighter in history...so he has to stick bombs down fat guys pants. An overly bizarre, pretentious script and storyline...that has no reason to be pretentious because it's about the most convoluted piece of hack-dom ever.

Michele Pfeiffer and the score were good...but not enough to save this movie. Keaton's sullen, middle-aged, nerdy Bruce Wayne is awful. At least Schumacher gives us a millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, and a Batman that can fight in the follow up to Burton/Keaton's garbage film. Well, at lease I think it's garbage. If you like ridiculous puppet-Penguin pallbearers...yes, puppet penguin pallbearers...you might think this the greatest thing ever made.

I know all the freaky, pseudo-Goth, Tim Burton fan boys love to trounce on this movie, but it does have many good points to accompany the bad. Since the other reviews cover the bad adequately, I'll stick up for the good points:

For starters, George Clooney made the best "Bruce Wayne" out of anyone to play him. In the much exalted animated, Bruce is a rich, handsome celebrity attending many gala functions amongst Gotham's social elite, and so he is portrayed in this movie. Far better than the quirky, curly haired nerd that no one in Gotham recognizes in Batman 1 and Batman Returns. However, Val Kilmer looked far more intimidating in the Batsuit than either George or Michael Keaton.

The cinematography from B&R and Batman Forever trounces Burtons movies. Seeing Batman falling through the air with cape flowing looks cool, and is a Batman trademark. Either because of technology limitations, or Burton's lack of vision, all we see from Burton's movies is one scene of Batman hang-gliding. I love the enormousness of Gotham in the Schumachers movies. Contrary to Burton fans whining, GOTHAM CITY IS NOT ONE HUGE DARK GHETTO! No major city, such as NY or LA is. While it's okay for Batman to hang out in the ghetto to beat up tw0-bit thugs, I can't really see him doing battle with anyone in his rogues gallery there. Can you picture Poison Ivy, the Riddler or Mr. Freeze hanging out on dark alley like Skid Row???

Some scenes involving Bruce & Alfred, and Freeze & Nora are actually quite on the money, and have much more depth than anything seen in the other 3 movies.

The movie was not a box office bomb. It made more than GoldenEye. This obviously isn't the movie most batfans were looking for, but was meant to be more of a comedic, lighter toned interpretation of Batman. If you judge it by what it was trying to be, it's actually a pretty okay comic-adventure with some stunning visuals. However, this isn't the direction the production should have taken: It should have been a more well balanced action/drama/tradgedy/adventure with some clever humor here and there, like the animated series.

Still this movie is better than either of Burtons. They had just as little depth, a quirky unintimidating Batman, and none of the stunning visuals from the latter two Bat films.

This was in the bottom 5 of the worst movies I've ever seen. The plot made no sense. The acting was awful. There was nothing right about the movie. At first it's very entertaining to pick out all of the production bloopers, and make fun of the horrid acting (including a person making a "squak" noise for Hulk's parrot instead of having the parrot actually squak.) But after a while it just puts you to sleep. I'm a huge Hulk Hogan fan, but I have no idea why he makes movies like this and "Santa With Muscles." I also don't know why Grace Jones or The Big Show, Paul "Chef Bordee" Wight, agreed to make this. Hulk is very talented and is a tremendous entertainer, but for some reason loves B movies that make him look like an idiot. If you have any love for Hulk, please don't see this movie.

I liked the young Indiana Jones Chronicles, but it never really seemed like it was the same Indy from the movies. All I mostly remember from the series, was Indy wandering around w/ the Belgian Army during WWI alot. The series never got into the "meat" of young Indy: The death of his mother; early adventures (other than running into historical figures); showing exactly what happened with Professor Ravenwood and Marion; showing him and his faithful sidekick from Temple of Doom...Yohan! Basically, alot of things brought up in the movies never got covered in the TV series. They should have added this kind of stuff to the episodes they made.

Charlton Heston is the greatest film actor who ever lived, and this is another great film for him. The only thing I didn't like was the pointless subplot with the Baroness girl.

This is not meant to be a political film; but rather a "western" set in China. As such, some of the politically correct brain-washed out there may complain about things such as: --all they learned from this movie is that the Chinese are barbaric, when they would have rather learned that Westerners are barbaric,

--Or they might complain about Chinese extras being "forced" to act like savages, when they were in fact actors who were working of their own free will

--Or they may insinuate that a movie from a Chinese point of view like "The Last Emperor" (as if Bernardo Bertolucci is Chinese) is innately better because it is a Chinese perspective, and not of the evil Western P.O.V.

--Or they may complain that this movie should have been about the Opium Wars--even though this movie did not want to be about the Opium Wars; it wanted to be about the Boxer Rebellion.

--Or they may complain about John Wayne for no logical reason. In any event, this movie is a good Chuck Heston action flick, and not meant to be a political statement. Enjoy this movie without succumbing to the P.C. Thought Police's mandate that anything pro Western is automatically bad...