![]() He and Catwoman share a Mapplethorpe moment when she whips the rubber-suited one into submission and his bat toes curl. Pfeiffer alone brings human vulnerabilities to her role. ![]() A mousy sort before her brain was damaged in a fall, she equips herself with a bullwhip and a homemade, black vinyl suit, proclaiming: "I am Catwoman, hear me roar." Though predominantly occupied with fighting sex crimes, she starts to get in the way of Batman's heroics. Meanwhile, Catwoman, a victim of corporate evil and sexual oppression, slinks deliciously on the scene. ![]() As Christmas approaches, he emerges from his underground kingdom claiming to search for his parents when he is really intent on leveling Gotham and grounding Batman. But Burton as usual is focused on his most maniacal character, Oscar "The Penguin" Cobblepot, a deformed sewer-dweller who was raised by zoo penguins after his parents tossed him off Gotham's equivalent of the Tallahatchee Bridge. Indeed Batman, who was orphaned, and Penguin, who was abandoned, are virtually birds of a feather - which makes for an interesting relationship that Keaton explores with subtlety. The Penguin (Danny DeVito) hopes to ally with her in his battle for dominance over Batman.Īll damaged children in disguise (none of them heroic), the dysfunctional half-menagerie can't help but understand one another. The secretary of evil polluter Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) by day, Selina "Catwoman" Kyle takes on a dual personality when she is raised from the dead by cats. This installment of the Batman epic concerns the "difficulty with duality," as the hero puts it to the scratchy, licky Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer), his sinuous new love-hate interest. A grand parody of Rockefeller Square, it represents the city's hegemony over its citizens, who have gathered for the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony when the action begins: A cadre of the Penguin's macabre harlequins attacks, and Bruce "Batman" Wayne (Michael Keaton) is summoned by Batsign. But the mood is so suffocatingly somber it might have been shot in the belly of an architect - probably the one who built the movie's fabulously fascistic Gotham Plaza. Working from a screenplay by the equally dire Daniel Waters, who wrote "Heathers" and "Hudson Hawk," Burton aims for a lighter, brighter, sexier sequel. An architectural and anthropomorphic psychodrama, the sequel is a bulky amalgam of Stupid Pet Tricks, Visigothic Disney World and "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden." Like its lethargic forebear, it suffers from director Tim Burton's basic indifference to what becomes of his characters after he's drawn them. Children under 13 should be accompanied by a parentĪ wild kingdom of half-man half-beasts populates wintry, moldering Gotham in "Batman Returns," a bleakly visionary but dramatically obtuse encore for the Dark Knight and his fellow freaks.
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