Review: Batman

When little Bruce Waynes parents where shot down before his eyes, he decided to rid his city of evil. He trained in a monastry, studied forensics and disguised as a bat to strike fear in the hearts of his enemies. Sadly, this tale is entirly fictious. But if Batman were real, the first thing he would do is probably beat up Tim Burton. Not for murdering his parents, but for butchering everything that ever made the character great.

Batman (the film) is something the obese, cynical thirtysomethings that write the internet tend to drool over with glee. Micheal Keatons Batman was even featured as the second-best Batman in this very amusing article (property of Cracked.com). So my hopes were up somewhat when I set out to watching the movie. And anyway: it’s Tim Burton! How bad can it be?

Awful, as it turns out.

The story of Batman is about the most basic one you can tell with the entire mythos: there’s Batman, there’s The Joker, there’s The Girl, Joker tries to take over shit, Batman beats him up, humping ensues, ya di ya di ya. We also get treated to both of the characters’ origin stories somewhere along the line. Nothing new here, and certainly nothing that could be called creative storytelling.

Batman is basically nothing of what it should be, and whatever it does right is rather irrelevant. For starters: the acting is blander then a mouthful of unbuttered toast, and just as hard to swallow. How the hell did they ever make Jack Nicholson, one of the greatest actors ever, play The Joker, one of the greatest villains ever, with such a complete lack of depth? This is by far the worst acting job I’ve ever seen the man do, and compared with something like The Shining it’s almost a disgrace. But Keaton is even worse, somehow. I don’t think it is humanly possible to be a more boring Batman. He never gives the impression that he is the vigilante badass we all love him for. Instead, he just stands around in his silly costume and looks like someone just hit him with a brick over the head. Then he walks over to a bag guy and punches him with the velocity of a ladybug. Said bad guy then falls over. (…) Thrills!

 Derp

The script is downright stupid as well, the lines are cheesy and some of the supporting characters are downright annoying. There is this papparazo guy who is both annoying AND usesless to the movie. The movie seems to realize this halfway through, after which he just sort of disappears. Even the music is mediocre, and it was written by Danny Elfman, for Christs sake! The man is a goddamn superstar of movie composers, but given this mess of a movie even he doesn’t know what to do.

And you know what? I wouldn’t have mind. I wouldn’t have given a shit about every nasty thing I just said if the movie would just be fun. But it isn’t. In fact, it’s boring as hell. It’s NOT to much to want movie starring the goddamn Batman to be at least fun.

This movie is basically just a parade of great moviepeople working miles beyond their full potential. Just watch the Nolanmovies again, they are infinitly better.

Alias

Aaawh yeah.