I don’t mind movies that don’t make sense.
I never count how many bullets someone fires from a gun without changing the clip.
I don’t care when George Lucas decides that we need to hear explosions in the silent vacuum of outer space.
I think it’s fine that Jason from Friday the 13th movies can be stabbed, drowned, dismembered and blown to pieces and still show up for a sequel.
I believe that ninjas can do anything.
But, yeesh, there are moments in Tim Burton’s Batman movie that bother even me. I’m like a porn fiend who’s finally found something too fucked up to jerk off to. Batman is my 2 Girls 1 Cup.
How does Batman shoot at a completely stationary Joker from his Batwing fighter plane—got him bullseye’d with fancy targeting equipment and everything—and STILL MISS? Does ANY moment in Vicki Vale’s apartment where The Joker and Bruce Wayne talk face-to-face seem to be happening on planet Earth? And why, seriously why, does that scene where Alfred brings Vicki Vale down to the Batcave even happen? I’ll give $100 to anyone who can explain that one without it boiling down to Alfred’s incompetence or spite.
Tell you the big problem here: This whole thing reeks of a movie that was constantly re-written, right up to the last day in the editing room. Tim Burton didn’t know what the hell was going on any more than we do. Ever see an interview with Burton from around this time? How this stammering, awkward, gesticulating monkey ever became a major director is a bigger mystery than any of those plot holes mentioned above.
Not that Burton isn’t likable. He is. It’s those flashes of his absurd vision that make this disaster of any interest at all.
Let’s get a few things straight here: Burton has no interest in Batman or in action scenes. What he has is a whole lot of interest in The Joker, the monster. I wouldn’t expect anything less from as big a Vincent Price fan as Burton. Jack Nicholson’s Joker chews up the scenery like a fat guy chews up a free pizza. He’s an actor who can go as far as any director wants and even a little further. He’s too crazy to care that he’s in a movie that makes no sense or that he’s poorly written (we’re told that Nicholson’s Jack Napier is grade-A psycho, but never see it until he becomes The Joker). Like Pee Wee Herman, like Beetlejuice, The Joker is an opportunity for Tim Burton, the frustrated cartoonist, to run wild. That bore who wears the cape is merely obligatory.
EDIT: This review was written in 2014. In 2020, I wrote a more positive reassessment.