Reviews

Hard to believe that just three years ago (2008), Marvel made the bold decision to create a single movie universe out of their second-tier heroes (though some may argue that Iron Man is first-tier; IMO, that honor really belongs to Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four...but that's an argument for another time) that would allow them to finally bring The Avengers to the big screen. This plan got off to a hugely successful start with 2008's IRON MAN (9/10) and a decent reboot of THE INCREDIBLE HULK (7/10) later that same year, and started picking up steam when 2010's IRON MAN 2 (8/10) brought War Machine and Black Widow into the picture. This year, THOR (7/10) ushered in a good start to the summer movie season and introduced the malevolently mischievous Loki to the mix while giving us a sneak peek at Hawkeye. Now, Captain America finally gets his chance to shine. How does he do?

Rejoice, Marvelites, for Marvel Studios has done it again...taken a hero whose origins would be difficult to get right on film and managed to make it look easy. Chris Evans, whose first foray into Marvel movies was playing Johnny Storm (the Human Torch) in the merely O.K. FANTASTIC FOUR, is amazing as Steve Rogers, the 90-lb. weakling who gets transformed into a Super Soldier and becomes the much-beloved Captain America. Evans never lets us forget that Cap's real strength has always been his good heart and his love for his country, and that overarching goodness and patriotism are perfectly blended together in this pastiche of 40's nostalgia mixed with WWII heroism and just a touch of steampunk (relax, it works here).

The plot, if you've read any reviews, you already know, so I won't rehash it here. Instead, I'll touch on how much I really enjoyed every moment in this movie; the scenes are perfectly put together, all the set pieces move the action forward (even the cheesy USO show montage), and the pace never drags, even in the slower, more personal sections. I do wish a little more work had gone into making the villainous Red Skull (the always-great Hugo Weaving, who could make reading a phonebook interesting) a more compelling villain to watch; yes, Weaving does great work with what he's been given, but he could have been so much better. HYDRA never really feels like a true threat because of the way Cap and his men handle them so easily, and that's too bad, because a real menacing presence is the one thing this movie really needed to go beyond "Entertaining".

The supporting players, though, all do great work in making this universe feel real and alive. Hayley Atwell as British Intelligence Agent Peggy Carter, Cap's budding love interest, is great, and their interactions are surprisingly touching. Dominic Cooper plays millionaire inventor Howard Stark with a mixture of charm and intensity (and more than a little touch of Robert Downey Jr.'s mannerisms--watch for the moment when Stark peers over the top of his glasses in a very Downey-esque manner) that provides a nice foreshadowing of his importance in later Marvel lore (as a founder of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the father of Iron Man Tony Stark)--plus seeing an early version of Stark Industries' logo on every piece of tech is too cool for words. Tommy Lee Jones was born to play an Army hard-nose, and he doesn't disappoint as Rogers' commanding officer Colonel Chester Phillips.

The movie, though, ultimately hinges on Evans' ability to pull off the earnestly intense Captain America, and he does it brilliantly. Even the moment where Cap makes what he believes will be the Ultimate Sacrifice (and if you know your Captain America lore, you know EXACTLY what that sacrifice is and how he's going to do it) never becomes cheesy or overdone; when Cap's voice vanishes from the radio, I cried. Stick around for the post-credits tease, where we FINALLY get our first look at THE AVENGERS (due in 2012); it's well worth it.,

Fans of Robert Downey Jr. who are just discovering (or rediscovering) this talented actor thanks to the box office smashes IRON MAN and TROPIC THUNDER may be surprised to learn that RDJ has more than 50 film credits to his name and logged his first credited role at age 5. This movie, released a year after Downey's electrifying performance as Julian Wells in LESS THAN ZERO, pairs the 23-year-old second-generation actor (son of actress Elsie Ford and director Robert Downey, Sr.) with 19-year-old second-generation actor Kiefer Sutherland (son of Donald) as college buds Ralph Carr and Scott Denney, grads from their small-town Maryland high school just two years prior, as they enter the infamous "Summer of Love", the summer of 1969.

We first meet Ralph and Scott hitchhiking their way home from college on spring break, allowing for some shorthand character profiling: Scott is the intellectual, fresh-faced, optimistic anti-war hippie wannabe with a smile forever planted on his face except when lamenting that he has yet to get laid; Ralph is his chain-smoking, profane, cynical opposite, a sex-crazed (bragging he's bagged 14 women) drug-toting slacker wild child who's still a scared kid who can't wait to get home to Mom at heart. Ralph's got a kid sister who got all the brains in the family ("But I'm ugly, so it's O.K.," Ralph reasons), Beth (a 17-year-old Winona Ryder), who's got a mad crush on Scott, which drives a wedge between Ralph and Scott; Scott's got an older brother who joined the Marines rather than go to college, Alden (Christopher Wynne), whose impending departure to Vietnam drives a wedge between them as well as between Scott and his WWII vet father (Bruce Dern). You soon get the idea: Ralph's family is the more liberal, looser one (run by loose-moralled lush widow Ev, played by Joanna Cassidy); Scott's is the more conservative, uptight one (with wound-tight stuck-in-the-50s Cliff and Jessie, played by Bruce Dern and Mariette Hartley). The parallelism gets tiresome after a while, and by the time the inevitable happens (Alden goes MIA, Ralph flunks out of school and discovers he's about to be drafted, Scott and Beth hit the road and head for Canada to avoid Scott suffering the same fate), the movie veers off into Cliché-Land, and by the time the Only-In-Hollywood ending rolls around, you're ready to either throw things at the TV or snap your DVD in half.

The script is uneven at best (Ralph and Scott go on the road in a VW van, go out to San Francisco, and then seem to turn right around and go back to Maryland again), and none of the characters are very well written. Downey and Sutherland share top billing, but Sutherland's Scott is clearly meant to be the main protagonist with RDJ's Ralph as a darker reflection on the "hippie" lifestyle taken to extreme; of the two, Ralph comes across more fully developed, aided considerably by RDJ's mad acting skills, while Scott never seems to come alive because Sutherland seems to have just one expression for every emotion except anger. Ryder is really gorgeous and does a good job with what she's given, but she's saddled with some horribly clunky anti-war speeches and clichés that make her character seem flat and one-note.

Just as in LESS THAN ZERO, RDJ once more plays a very convincing stoner. Whether he's taking hits off the remains of a joint left over from spring break while reflecting on why he didn't finish DON QUIXOTE ("It had a lot of...pages") or stripping to his briefs while tripping on a double dose of LSD in the high school gym, each drug-filled scene serves both as a reminder of just how good an actor he is (considering his own substance abuse issues through the 80s and 90s) and as a chilling reminder of the Hell awaiting him just a few years down the road.

1969 isn't a bad movie, but neither is it a good one. Catch it on cable and don't waste your money viewing it any other way.

CAPTAIN SCARLET AND THE MYSTERONS remains my favorite of Gerry Anderson's many puppet productions, in part because its story is both superhero-esquire and scarily timeless. Envisioned as a Cold War fable and set in a world at war with a merciless enemy who views their cause as just because they are retaliating for an unprovoked attack, the story works even better in the post-9/11 era, where your next-door neighbor you've known for years suddenly and without warning turns into a suicide bomber/hijacker/terrorist without you ever seeing the change in them or understanding why they picked your neighborhood/office/bus/train/etc.

The premise is surprisingly dark for a kid's show: Vowing revenge for an unprovoked attack on their Martian complex by an overzealous team of outer space explorers led by Spectrum officer Captain Black (the heavily processed voice of Donald Gray), the Mysterons--an unseen race of creatures with the power to recreate a destroyed item through a process called "retrometabolism"--abduct Black and turn him into their slave, then ruthlessly kill two more Spectrum agents, Captain Brown and Captain Scarlet (the impressive Cary Grant impersonation belongs to British stage actor Francis Matthews). Brown is turned into a suicide bomber--he literally blows up and nearly kills World President James Younger (INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE's Paul Maxwell)--while Scarlet is turned into an ice-cold assassin who abducts President Younger. But in a strange turn of events, a fall from the London Car-Vu breaks the Mysterons' hold over Scarlet, and he becomes Spectrum's greatest asset, an "indestructible man" who can recover even from fatal wounds and who can take on suicidal missions against the seemingly unstoppable Mysterons.

The outstanding cast, led by Matthews and UFO's Ed Bishop as his partner, Captain Blue, and the incredibly detailed sets and intricate storytelling truly elevate this series far above the average Saturday morning kid program, and even farther above Anderson's already lofty THUNDERBIRDS. This is stark, harsh, dark, and sometimes scary stuff. The good guys don't always win--in fact, sometimes they lose BIG. The Mysterons are seemingly unstoppable, not caring who gets hurt or how in their quest to destroy the Earth (again, the terrorism parallels are guaranteed to give you chills, especially when you watch an exploding Mysteron take out an entire building). And in practically every episode, Captain Scarlet dies. Really, he dies. He revives thanks to his retrometabolism, but he gets really, really bloodied and banged up in most episodes; parents, please think twice before letting really young children watch this show.

The fact that this show is now on DVD makes it possible to introduce the fantastic intricacies of this now-defunct style of children's' programming to a new generation. If you've never seen this show and like your superheroes dark, moody, and mysterious, check this one out. You won't regret it.

As a kid, I worshiped the '71 version of WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. I read Dahl's book CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY in one sitting as a pre-teen and shrugged, "Eh, the movie's better." When I heard Tim Burton was planning to make a "more faithful" version of CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, I vacillated between "hey, this could be great" and "oh, man, is this going to blow chunks", with each tantalizing picture and story from the set tipping me one way or the other with distressing regularity. So, on the opening Saturday, I bundled the family up and headed out to the theatres to see which diametrically opposed opinion would win out in my head.

I'm sorry to say, the "blow chunks" side won by a mile.

The first 40-or-so minutes of this movie is really amazing, with some of Tim Burton's best "real world" visuals ever. It captures quite well the heartbreaking, soul-sucking poverty of Charlie Bucket and his barely-functional family, far better than the '71 movie version does. Grandpa Joe is given a decent backstory (he used to work for Wonka when Wonka had human employees), Charlie has a father in this version who loses his job capping toothpaste tubes (Wonka's contest has created such a demand for candy that the demand for toothpaste rises faster than humans can produce), and they all (Mom, Dad, Charlie, and four bedridden grandparents who share the same bed) live in a ramshackle house that looks as if it would fall over with one really strong breeze. The highlight of this part of the movie is Freddie Highmore as Charlie, whose big eyes and beaming smile conveys Charlie's innate inner goodness to near perfection, and when he is heartbroken over losing his chance to get a golden ticket, you feel your own heart ache...and then you cheer when he finally DOES get one of his own. This young actor's got quite a future ahead of him.

And then, it's time for our five lucky winners to enter the factory. And that's when the film goes to Hades in a handbasket and never recovers.

The blame for this goes around more or less equally between Burton, Elfman (whose score, with the exception of the great "Willy Wonka The Amazing Chocolatier" song, is the worst he's ever done), and the writers...but at least some of the blame has to rest on Johnny Depp's hideous portrayal of Wonka, which completely overwhelms the rest of the movie. Garish costumes, bad hair, freaky makeup, strange voice, and weird mannerisms do not a great performance make, and one can't help but compare Depp's version of the character with Gene Wilder's sly, silky, menacing-yet-hilarious portrayal 24 years earlier. Wilder comes out on the winning end of that race by more lengths than Funny Cide at the Preakness a couple of years ago. Wilder's Wonka is a mysterious sort, offering tantalizing glimpses of what's under the surface, a worldly and wise man who has a child's sense of wonder and fun mixed with an extremely liberal dose of adult cynicism. Depp's Wonka is insane, maladjusted, and just plain weird, and the result is off-putting to say the least.

The writing from the chocolate factory onward is HORRIBLE. It's as if the writers abandoned all pretense of their promised "faithful" adaptation and instead just threw a bunch of scenes from the '71 version, pages from the book, and bad plots from a random story generator together in a hat and compiled whatever came out the other end. Want a sample of the bad plotting these monkeys with word processors came up with? Wonka's love of candy comes from...get ready...childhood trauma and daddy issues. Really. I'm not kidding. I'll wait while you grab your barf bags before going on.

Elfman's terrible music...well, the less said, the better. I don't care if his lyrics come straight out of the book, that doesn't make them GOOD. What happened to the supercomposer whose grandiose superhero themes made him THE go-to guy for summer blockbusters? Yuck.

But the worst blame has to go to Tim Burton. Once the movie hits the chocolate factory, Charlie--you remember him, the kid whose name is in the title?--completely disappears. It's as if he's just there to fill a frame. If he has a dozen lines inside the factory, I'll be shocked. The rest of the kids are no better (except for Mike Teavee, who is very well played here). Several visuals are stolen color-for-color and prop-for-prop from the '71 movie, except they're not done as well. The ability to use CGI to render things in the factory (165 Oompa Loompas, all played by Deep Roy; blueberry Violet; the candy boat ride) does NOT improve on the '71 version at all. And what a waste of Christopher Lee as Dr. Wonka (Wonka's dentist father, who forbade his son candy because he proclaimed it would rot his son's braces-encased teeth). Like the writers, Burton completely abandons his "faithful" adaptation in favor of a "re-imagining" ala his dreadful PLANET OF THE APES. The film meanders another 20 minutes beyond its logical ending just so Burton can work some more on his father issues ala the plot of BIG FISH.

By the time the movie does end (it's a REALLY long-feeling 2:20), all I could think of was running home and putting in my DVD of the '71 version to cleanse my brain's pallet. Don't be surprised if you're tempted to do the same. Better yet, save yourself the $10 and rent the '71 version instead. It may be sticky sweet, but it's far better than the nasty, bitter pill that's in theatres now.

Truer words will never come out of a movie character's mouth this year than the sentiments expressed by Johnny Storm about his newfound abilities. This flick got a bum rap from critics, whom I can only guess have plain forgotten how to have fun at the movies. As a longtime FF fan and Marvel fan in general, I was beginning to despair that Marvel only knew how to make good superhero movies when their subjects contained some variation of the word "Man" in their names (Spider-Man, X-Men), and the internet buzz wasn't promising any relief from that worry. Thankfully, I was proved wrong. FANTASTIC FOUR isn't a great film by any stretch (pun intended) of the imagination, but it isn't bad, either. It's a fun popcorn romp, but don't check your brain at the door; you'll need it a few times to get some of the more subtle moments in this surprisingly nuanced picture.

You've read the synopsis a hundred times in a hundred reviews, so I won't repeat it here. Suffice it to say the movie works best when it focuses on what makes the FF comics work best: The interaction between the main characters, particularly our "Fantastic Four", as the press dubs them (the movie makes the interesting point that superheroes in today's world would be the rock stars, reality TV personalities, sports superstars, etc., crystalizing in a scene where Sue runs away pursued by fans when she stops at a newsstand and stares at her likeness on every magazine and newspaper). Reed and Sue's dysfunctional romance, Sue and Johnny's sibling spats, Reed and Victor's ongoing scientific (and personal) oneupmanship battle, Johnny and Ben's chest-puffery, Reed and Ben's longtime loyal friendship strained by guilt and frustration--it's all here, and more. Tim Story showed in BARBERSHOP that he could do personal interaction with the best of them, and while his ability to stage action shots is a little haphazard in this movie, the personal scenes shine brighter than Johnny Storm's supernova-capable inner torch.

The acting is uniformly good, with Jessica Alba as Sue Storm being the only weak link (and she's not bad, just not as good as the others). Chris Evans as Johnny Storm is the film's comic relief, a role he plays with relish; by the end of the movie, you're laughing every time he's on-screen. Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm manages to gather the perfect blend of anger, humor, gentleness, and pathos; you really feel for Ben's situation by the end of the movie, particularly when he has to make a hard choice near the end whether to save his friends or reclaim his humanity. Ioan Gruffudd has taken a lot of flack in some reviews for his less-showy portrayal of Reed Richards, but Reed as a character is less showy than his counterparts, and Gruffudd perfectly captures the intensity of Reed's exacting, almost paralyzing intellect that blends with a genuine sense of distress about his miscalculation of the cosmic storm's intensity that got them all into this mess. The interaction between Reed and Ben is especially well-done; in many ways, Reed and Ben are both in similar situations--their bodies have turned into something they don't quite understand and can't always control (Sue awakens Reed after he falls asleep at his desk and discovers his face has molded into the shape of his computer keyboard), and the scene where the two of them get into a fight over a not-yet-complete reverse mutation machine (Ben: "Look at me!" Reed: "I AM looking at you! That's why I can't make a mistake with this!") is right up there with some of the great character interactions in the SPIDER-MAN and X-MEN movies.

As for Victor Von Doom, well, Julian McMahon isn't bad, but he isn't good either. I'd have preferred Doom to be a little more menacing, but when he finally takes the turn and embraces his own destiny, it's fun to watch. McMahon's sly, silky evil turn as Doom doesn't quite measure up to the better Marvel villains of recent movies (Bryan Cox in X2, Alfred Molina in SPIDER-MAN 2), but there are moments where he's genuinely scary, and that's just enough to keep the audience interested as the tension builds toward a really good (if a bit short) final showdown between the Fantastic Four and Dr. Doom worthy of the comics.

The ending strongly suggests a sequel is coming, and the movie certainly deserves it. It's not perfect, but it's a darn good start to what will likely one day join the ranks of Marvel's great superhero movies.

CONTAINS SPOILERS. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.







Pros:

--Hugo Weaving, who could read the phone book and I'd still watch. The man rocks my world.

--That freeway chase was way cool (but...see the Cons section).

--The chocolate-cake-as-metaphor scene was clever (but...see the Cons section).

--The Keymaker was a neat idea and executed well.

--I liked the concept of choice being just another binary branch in The Matrix (the whole "You've already made the choice, now you just have to understand it" notion), and the notion that all of these branches have all been executed before, including several instances of "The One".

--Loved the sequence where the Zionites ask Neo to bless and protect their loved ones. One of the few moments where I thought the over-the-top religious symbology worked perfectly.

--Keanu's blank stares and lack of range work well for this character, especially this time around.

Cons:

--Every fight scene is about twice as long as it needs to be.

--The freeway chase is about twice as long as it needs to be.

--The Zion orgy is about twice as long as it needs to be. (Seeing a trend here?)

--The Neo vs. 100 Agent Smiths brawl is frankly pointless. For starters, it's brought in at the wrong place in the film (think what a huge thing this would have been near the end, as Neo's trying to get to the Architect). Then, it's got THE worst CGI in the movie, which is honestly saying something (I swear, NOBODY had ever make any disparaging comments about the CGI in SPIDER-MAN again after this scene, because the CGI in this scene is so obvious that you can pick out EXACTLY which actors are real and which aren't). Finally, after all is said and done, Neo flies away from it all, which is exactly what he should have done as soon as he saw a gazillion Smiths rushing out to him. I love Hugo Weaving, he rocks my world, but this was just stupid.

--The exposition scenes bring the plot to a screeching halt, mostly because every fight scene is way too long, which makes the slow exposition scenes stick out like sore thumbs.

--Did we really need a penetration shot in the chocolate cake scene? This and the Zion orgy/Neo-Trinity coupling give this film an R for completely the wrong reasons.

--Speaking of Neo/Trinity as a couple, Carrie-Anne Moss looks like a man in this movie. I remember her as being beautiful in a unique and different way in the first movie; what happened here?

--Way, way too many Superman in-jokes. Yeah, we get it, Neo is Superman. Which means there's ZERO suspense in anything he does; we know he'll eventually come out on top. I halfway expected Neo to fly around the earth and rotate it backwards to bring Trinity back to life.



On balance, I liked it, but it absolutely does not live up to the hype. 6/10

...because if you get suckered in by the hype or think too long about the movie, you won't like it.

MINORITY REPORT is visually one of the most interesting movies I've seen in a long time. The FX are good, the washed out overbright coloration of the shots are perfect for a harsh spotlight turned on the future, and many of the scenes are brilliantly staged. And on first glance, the story is quite engaging. John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is the chief of Washington, DC's Precrime Unit, an experimental police force using the psychic talents of three "Pre-Cogs" to predict murders before they happen, thus dropping the DC homicide rate to zero. But on the eve of the Precrime unit going nationwide, Anderton finds himself in one of the Pre-Cogs' visions, and now has to escape a future that has already been predicted. Are the Pre-Cogs always right? If you know the future, can you change it? How does free choice and free will mesh with a crime unit based on prediction of your future, and how do they know you didn't change your mind before you went through with your crime? And what does all this do to the presumption of innocence, the cornerstone of the American justice system?

Then you stop and think about it for a minute, and the story falls apart.

SPOILERS BELOW...CLICK AWAY NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THEM...













The ways in which this plot falls apart are many and varied. Some examples:

-- If the chief of precrime is suspected of a crime, why don't they remove his retinal-coded security access? And even after he's locked up and put in jail, they still don't remove it. Sloppy, sloppy writing.

-- Why bring in the notion of a "minority report" (a Pre-Cog vision that differs from the "official" version, erased from the official records but stored in the lead Pre-Cog's memories) if you don't intend to use it? We never see one, and it plays no part in the film's outcome.

-- If you're paying attention, you'll figure out who the real villain is the first time they have an extended scene with him. You'll even figure out his motive and a few other things about him. At least, I did. Really, it was that easy.

-- Why does the Pre-Cog pool have an emergency drain? It serves no useful purpose except to provide Anderton with a convenient escape route.

-- These Pre-Cogs are a fluke, an accident, a genetic experiment gone awry according to their creator, and yet they plan to take this program nationwide? How? Create more? Make the ones they've got see more? Which leads directly to the next problem...

-- Can the Pre-Cogs see beyond DC? If so, why don't they? We're told from the start this is a one-city unit--what, does someone erect a psychic border around the nation's capitol? What about the Maryland and Virginia suburbs--what, no one who commits a murder in DC lives in the burbs or vice versa?

-- It's all too convenient that the Pre-Cogs can only work as a unit, particularly when you've already introduced the notion of a "minority report" (one seeing different things than the others, implying at least two different trains of thought are possible). When the unit gets broken up and suddenly no more murders can be predicted, the film takes its biggest leap of logic, and I immediately found myself going "Huh?"





Still, though, there are worse ways to spend $8. If you like your films visually interesting and you're willing to completely suspend logic for 2.5 hrs., go see it. Just don't buy into the hype that this is the movie of the year or any other such nonsense.

BATMAN FOREVER is the third installment in the series of films Tim Burton began in 1989 with BATMAN and continued with BATMAN RETURNS. It is the first of these BATMAN films not to have Tim Burton in the director's chair, and also the first not to have Michael Keaton playing Bruce Wayne/Batman. Although the film is a Tim Burton production, it is directed by Joel Schumacher (THE LOST BOYS), and Val Kilmer (TOP GUN, WILLOW) wears the cape for this installment. Other new characters include: Chase Meridian, a criminal psychologist, played by Nicole Kidman (DEAD CALM); Dick Grayson/Robin, a young man who has fallen under circumstances similar to young Bruce Wayne's own, played by Chris O'Donnell (SCENT OF A WOMAN); the villains, Harvey "Two-Face" Dent and The Riddler, a.k.a. Edward Nygma, played, respectively, by Tommy Lee Jones (THE FUGITIVE) and Jim Carrey (THE MASK). Veteran character actor Pat Hingle returns to the cast as Gotham City Police Commissioner James Gordon, and Michael Gough also returns as Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred Pennyworth.

This movie is difficult to place in terms of how I would rate it among the four pre-BATMAN BEGINS BATMAN movies. It is not the best, certainly; the original BATMAN wins hands down, for reasons that factor into my review of FOREVER and which are explained below. But whereas the second movie became obsessed with Burtonesque cinematic vision and a dark, gruesome mood that was definitely not for the children the advertising was targeting, BATMAN FOREVER told a story that, although more acceptable for young viewers, failed, in my opinion, to be a convincing part of Burton's BATMAN mythos at all.

First, this is a very fast action movie. I had trouble following some of the action scenes, they went by so rapidly. This was accompanied by a dizzying way of moving the cameras that shot these scenes. It was disconcerting and dizzying, and a great many times I lost track of what was going on visually altogether.

Speed was also a damaging factor in character development, especially that of the villains. I was annoyed to find that certain scenes crucial to the establishment of Two-Face's character were cut out somewhere between the publication of the publicity comic and poster books and the release of the film. Two-Face is suddenly dropped on us as a villain Batman is fighting without even a polite explanation of how the actor had changed from Billy Dee Williams to Tommy Lee Jones.

I also had a problem with how Jim Carrey played his role. He played The Riddler/Ed Nygma in a way that made him scarcely discernible in voice or mannerisms, to my observation, from Ace Ventura or The Mask. I noticed something strange: I was remembering a very funny line Carrey had delivered (he is quite comical and had me laughing numerous times), but I could not remember for the life of me whether the character who spoke the line was The Riddler or Ace Ventura. And the worst part was, it really did not matter. I had no reason whatever to be interested in the villains, other than for the fact that they were endangering Batman and Gotham City. This was a far cry from Nicholson's Joker, and also from DeVito's Penguin and Pfeiffer's Catwoman.

I was also disappointed in the FOREVER music. I listened to the orchestral music that underpinned most of the movie and found myself wishing profoundly for Danny Elfman's work. That was another difference I did not like.

But it's time to say a bit about what I did like about the movie. Not all the film was too fast. The scenes where Dick Grayson is taken in by Bruce at Wayne Manor and he discovers himself and decides he wants to help Batman after his parents are killed under circumstances similar to Wayne's own loss are done well and paced just about right. Also, the scenes where Chase Meridian wants to unlock Bruce Wayne's bad memories about his parents' deaths are slowed down to a point that they are believable, despite the fact that Val Kilmer is no Michael Keaton, and Nicole Kidman is no Kim Basinger, in terms of acting skill with such scenes. Schumacher pulled those scenes off well.

The stunts themselves were pleasing and plentiful. One such stunt involved the Batmobile using a grappling hook to ascend the side of a building with as much ease as its driver normally would. This stunt was needed, in my opinion, because for all the look of the new Batmobile's design, it did not seem as functional or stylish to me as the models in the previous movies. But it was used rather well, as was Batman's silken cord, which he used in an amazing rescue where its strength was used to support a bank vault. When the aforementioned pace and camera technique did not leave me totally lost or with a dizzy headache, the stunts and the special effects were quite a bit of fun to watch. At times they seemed to take over, but usually this was again the fault of the film's pacing.

BATMAN Forever was not terrible. In some ways, it was quite good. It succeeded as a suspense-filled modern action film, and it has a decent amount of kid appeal. I would have no qualms about taking a child to see this movie; the youngster would have a ball. To me, ultimately, its failure was that it was not much more than that. It made me miss Burton's touch. Unfortunately, the franchise would not learn from this lesson, and we got another movie's worth of dreck afterward. I sometimes wonder if this film was the beginning of the end.