UNHAPPY OUTSIDERS: DARK CURRENTS IN BATMAN RETURNS MAKE THIS A FILM YOU WANT TO PROTECT BUT NOT ENDORSE

By Dave Kehr

From The Toronto Star, 06.19.1992, Final Edition

Given a free hand to create the sequel to Batman, director Tim Burton has come up with a far more personal film than his 1989 original.

There are flashes of commercially oriented action and humor, but the over-all feeling is one of a languid depression sprung straight from the heart of its author.

In fact, Batman Returns is so personal that it owes much more to Edward Scissorhands, Burton's 1990 Christmas fantasy about a lonely young man with knifeblades for fingers, than it does to the comic book hero created by Bob Kane.

Not only is the theme identical--that of the misunderstood man-boy, whose knowledge of the dark side of life has made him unlovable, he fears, to other human beings--but so are the tattered leather costumes, the exaggerated, expressionistic set design, the swelling, highly emotional score by Danny Elfman, and many of the more self- pitying lines of dialogue.

Over it all falls the lovely and inexplicably moving artificial snow of Edward Scissorhands's fairy-tale setting.

The chief difference is that this time, the screenplay by Daniel Waters (Heathers) provides three unhappy outsiders, instead of Edward's solo act.

There is Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne, of course, still brooding before the gigantic, Citizen Kane-like fireplace of his hill-top mansion, alone but for his faithful butler Alfred (Michael Gough) and his memories of his blue-blooded parents, killed by a mugger in part one.

But now there is The Penguin (Danny DeVito, all but unrecognizable under Stan Winston's waxy makeup), who could be Bruce Wayne as reflected in a distorting carnival mirror.

Grotesquely deformed, and prone to violent acts against kitty cats from a very early age, the poor creature is seen in a flashback being violently rejected by his aristocratic parents--pitched, baby carriage and all, into the Gotham City sewer system, where benign currents lead him into the care of a forgotten colony of penguins in the Arctic World exhibit of an abandoned zoo.

And there is Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer, in the film's most passionate and memorable performance), the mousy, much- abused executive secretary to Gotham City retail magnate Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) until the night she accidentally uncovers his plan to pump away Gotham's energy reserves through a phony power plant.

Shreck calmly shoves her through an upper-storey window, leaving her crumpled body to be miraculously revived in the street below by a band of compassionate felines.

Reawakened, she is also reborn, suddenly discovering her feminist anger and sexual power as she whips up a tight-fitting dominatrix outfit on her home sewing machine.

Catwoman walks--not just Batman's evil twin, but a projection of his feminine side. (As in Edward Scissorhands, a distinct gay subtext runs through the film, particularly in its concentration on secret identities and what the characters call their "duality.")

Burton seems so smitten by the elaborate game of mirrors he has created that he can do little else but sit back and contemplate it.

As narrative, Batman Returns barely functions. A half-hearted attempt is made at some election-year topicality, with The Penguin, backed by Shreck, running a prophetic third party candidacy for mayor of Gotham City.

When that peters out, the Penguin mounts a biblical plan to assassinate the first-born sons of Gotham's leading families, which somehow engenders a hallucinatory finale in which an army of penguins (many of them played by elaborate puppets) fans out across the city.

More effectively, the film charts the shifting relationships among its three moody protagonists, relationships that range from infatuation to envy.

"Must you be the only lonely man beast in town?" taunts the Penguin at one point, to a Batman who clearly resents being upstaged.

Meanwhile, Bat and Cat mate by exchanging flesh wounds, working out in costumed combat the sexual tension they can't quite confront when they meet as Bruce and Selina. Again as in Edward Scissorhands, it's the touch of love that hurts the most.

Uniting all of this disparate, moody material is the film's magisterial visual style, which seems far more successful and complete than in the somewhat patchy original.

Taking his cues from the blend of gothic detail and art deco streamlining in Fritz Lang's Metropolis, designer Bo Welch has created a wholly enclosed, sound-stage environment full of dark corners, unexpected turnings and aching, existential voids.

Moving smoothly between visual epiphanies, Burton makes sure there is always something to look at.

Batman Returns may be the most expensive mood piece ever made.

Its commercial fate will depend on how willing audiences are to share that mood--one of wounded adolescent pride, of surly withdrawal and suppressed resentment, rather than the violent acting out of primal power fantasies that characterizes most recent blockbusters (such as the current Lethal Weapon 3).

As big as its budget may be (approximately $50 million), and as relentless as its promotional presence will be through the length of this summer, it is really a rather small, fragile object, a film one doesn't want to endorse as much as protect.