65/100

---

J GRAHAM Reviews BATMAN

I'm not a big fan of the comic books, to tell the truth. Recently I got into some of the brilliant graphic novels penned by Joseph Loeb and Frank Miller, but more than garnering my attention towards the Batman himself, I was more drawn into the stories written by Miller and Loeb, which was vintage stuff from each writer. So, that is to say, I didn't like Batman, I liked Frank Miller's Batman. Nonetheless, I was still anticipating 'Batman,' from Alexander and Flip Bros to be the game's first runaway hit, despite the poor ad campaign and odd lead casting choice. It didn't turn out that way.

When you're competing with a real life film for a release date, there's a lot of pressure. And seeing as the advances for 'Batman Begins' have looked absolutely brilliant (and so has the released script) that Newman's script never really competes, sagging in portions while being brilliant in others.  

The film is the umpteenth genesis story of the Caped Crusader, which I don't thoroughly mind, as it gives the franchise to start anew. We track young Bruce Wayne from the night of his parent's death to his thirtieth birthday, at which time he has become a wildly popular bachelor who has gained a notorious reputation in his city as irresponsible and generally wild. This behavior masks Wayne's troubled personality, as he still attempts to put his parent's deaths behind him. He takes over Wayne Enterprises, and begins massive restructuring, but can't seem to shake off the nagging feeling that he's letting his parents down. At the same time, one of the scientists working at Wayne Enterprises, Jervis Tetch (Robin Williams) lusts after his co-worker Alice McCormack (Kate Bosworth), who has also drawn interest from Wayne. Tetch's barely controllable anger blooms out after he perfects a mind control chip, and eventually slips on the fateful top hat. And in other psycho-related news, Doctor Jonathan Crane is given his walking papers, but develops the fear gas that becomes his hallmark when he too slips on the fateful Scarecrow persona. Then Bruce Wayne stumbles upon the cave, and Batman is born.  

It's all very by-the-numbers, but even a simplistic, straight forward plot can be done well, seeing as every single original idea ever has been done in one form or another. 'Batman' delivers the goods for the most part, delivering strong action sequences, and, importantly, not forgetting about the characters. In fact, the producer does a marvelous job of detailing and outlining the character's emotional crisis. While Crane becomes pure evil after murdering the University Dean (a crime that, mysteriously, is never looked into or mentioned), William's Mad Hatter has a real drive behind his character, and his slow descent into madness is superbly documented. In fact, it's at this point where the film falls into 'The Untouchables' syndrome: the bad guy is a hundred times more interesting than the good guy.  

When Boreanaz isn't wearing the Batman costume, he managed to pull off a convincing enough Bruce Wayne in the same way that Mark Hamill played Luke Skywalker. Boreanaz is a minimalist, not trying anything too fancy or emotionally deep, but playing the character in the simplest way possible. But the genesis of the superhero, considering the superb introduction that Frank Miller gave us, is lame. He punches a boxing bag, and then fights crime. Damn. That was easy.  

Other than Williams, the rest of the cast is stuck in thankless roles. Eccleston's aforementioned Scarecrow has nothing going from him other than the fear gas, and Kate Bosworth, who plays Alice in the love triangle, is the sobbing, screaming damsel in distress.  

The story is admirably written. It moves along at a good clip, the dialog is solid, and the set pieces work, but other than that, 'Batman,' is a piece of summer fluff that doesn't do anything too special, but is quite entertaining at the same time.

---

PEDRO Reviews BATMAN

This film was so big that it had to be shared by two studios. Both the Alexander Corporation and The Flip Bros released this film with Newman producing. I honestly expected the film to earn more dough than it did at the box office though. Now on with the review!  

PLOT: Yet another first year Batman story, where we are introduced to Bruce Wayne (David Boreanaz) Wayne at a younger age. We see Bruce’ s parents killed and the major Wayne company is taken over by its vice president. When Bruce is old enough though, he takes over the business, getting rid of the wild boy image that he once had. While doing this, he finds an underground cave underneath his mansion and he begins to envision bats all around. Bruce now has a girlfriend Alice McCormack (Kate Bosworth). He begins to get distant from her though when he starts up his Batman act and realizes that he needs to get rid of the criminals of the city of Gotham . One of the villains he must fight is Jervis Tech, AKA The Mad Hatter (Robin Williams), who was a scientist working for Bruce, who also has a big crush on Alice . The other main villain in the story is Doctor Jonathan Crane, AKA The Scarecrow (Christopher Eccleston). The Scarecrow shows the members of Gotham their deep and darkest fears. The plot was standard enough and we knew what would happen. This film though definitely made the year one experience interesting, but the film wasn’ t solid gold either.  

FINAL PLOT GRADE: 75/100  

DIALOGUE: The dialogue in the film ultimately wasn’ t that bad. The characters interacted just like they should. We get great dialogue from Bruce Wayne in realising that he has become something other than just a man. Jervis Tech has great dialogue, which leads to a great acting job by Robin Williams. Alice is the sweet and innocent type with really believable dialogue as the love interest.  The dialogue though could have used some tuning up just like in almost every film, but at least our ears aren’ t bleeding over this dialogue.  

FINAL DIALOGUE GRADE: 85/100  

CHARACTERS: Not too bad. The villains have very cool characters and its interesting to see how they turned into the vilains. The film had lots of good characterization with this and we get to see what the main stars like Bruce and Jerivs were like before they turned into their aliases. We need to see great characters to make a Batman film work. Some of the characterization was a bit bland towards the end, but still enough to give this a high grade.  

FINAL CHARACTERS GRADE: 75/100  

CASTING: Like msot everyone else, I would have cast someone else rather than Boreanaz as Bruce Wayne. I even liked Cassy's casting of Wes Bentley better than Boreanaz. I think that Boreanaz is great, but there are a million other people who would have made a better Batman. Robin Williams is of course perfect as Jervis Tech and really made the movie for me. I also would have picked someone rather than John Cleese as Alfred. Cleese is too comical for me for the role, and once again, I want to see someone other than Michael Mann used as director in HTG films.  

FINAL CASTING GRADE: 50/100  

PACING: The pacing of this film was actually really decent. We get great action sequences mixed in together with great character motivated scenes and we actually get to see the characters develop rather than just seeing this blow up. I was never bored with this film, which is always a good sign of the pacing. Just like most films, the pacing could have been better but I give props to Newman with this film.  

FINAL PACING GRADE: 85/100  

ADVERTISING: The advertising of this film was actually fabulous. This film's advertising is some of the best advertising I've seen on HTG thus far. The trailer was great, I really enjoyed it and I love how they set up the character profiles. Advertising for a Batman film is extremely important and this advertising definitely does the job, so I honestly expected this film to do better at the BO with this great advertising campaign.  

FINAL ADVERTISING GRADE: 100/100  

WRITING: The writing was pretty good. I didn't notice many errors in the script and it was an interesting read. I think that writing a Batman film is incredibly hard, and while this isn't the best script overall of  a Batman film, it certainly isn't the worst. I hope that we actually get to see a sequel for it, even though the film didn't make quite as much money as everybody thought it would opening weekend. I was shocked when I heard that Newman was writing this movie, he usually writes things like broadway plays and musicals and the Narnia series. For a super-hero type of film, he did a pretty good job at writing this film.  

FINAL WRITING GRADE: 85/100  

FINAL OVERALL GRADE: 80/100

---

MBRODERICK Reviews BATMAN

Well this is tough one. I really feel pretty mixed overall after seeing the movie. I can’t really say that I liked it that much, but I didn’t really hate it either (that’s not entirely true, I hated some parts). However, I am a huge Batman fan and have been since I was a kid so you could say it would be tough to please me on this. Then again, I really liked three of the five Batman films released in real life so maybe I’m not that tough of an audience. Anyway, the film has a lot of bad parts to it but enough good ones that I have hope someday maybe a sequel will come along that really is great.  

As the start of the HTG Batman franchise with a young actor in the lead it’s not too surprising that we begin with Bruce Wayne’s back story. I’m not going to relate that to you as you should know it already and if you don’t know it than that’s enough reason alone to see it (or if you can spare ten bucks, see Batman Begins in theaters). Anyway, yada yada yada Bruce Wayne ends up as a young playboy bachelor with a dark tragic past that’s planted the seed of the Batman in him. He takes over Wayne Enterprises for no really strong reason other than to introduce one of the scientists working there (Jervis Tetch aka the Mad Hatter). Tetch wants to have sex with a colleague (Kate Bosworth) and surprise surprise, so does Wayne . Because I mean, who doesn’t want to have sex with Kate Bosworth. Anyway this creates (what I think was) the central conflict of the movie. Oh yeah and Scarecrow shows up as well.  

What I covered in the last paragraph is where one of the BIG problems lies. The plot is constantly on shaky ground and really is weak even for a comic book movie. It’s just not tightly constructed at all. It seems as if the producer wanted to make a Batman movie but didn’t really care what Batman story he wanted to tell (Lord knows there’s plenty of source material, over a half century’s worth). It doesn’t help that the movie was released just a month before a  RL Batman movie with a really great story and very well-told at that. Which sort of brings me to my next point.

Whether or not there even was a plot, another thing movie essentially fails at is bringing some originality to the table. It bears striking resemblance actually to both Batman Begins and Batman Forever (not to mention Batman: The Animated Series). And when I say originality, I also mean flash. When you make a comic book movie, it’s really important to bring in a certain degree of coolness to the screen. The Tim Burton Batmans had style and color in spades. This film lacks all of that. At times, it is actually quite drab and sometimes even seems to get bored with itself. Getting back to its resemblance to other Batman movies, it shares villain problems with the lackluster Batman Forever. Mad Hatter is already similar enough to The Riddler without this movie basically using the same arc as the one The Riddler had in Forever, all the way down to using Robin Williams who was originally cast as The Riddler in that very movie. On the positive side, the movie handles the Mad Hatter actually a bit better. But then there’s Scarecrow. Awesomely executed in Batman Begins, Jonathan Crane ends up being nearly as pointless, mischaracterized and downright annoying as Two-Face was in Batman Forever. I might be getting to in depth with these comparisons but honestly I was shocked by a lot of this stuff.  

Not that it doesn’t get anything right. Batman is actually handled in a considerably above average way. There’s some real investment in the character and he ends up for once being the most interesting character in his own movie (this is doubly hard when you’re going up against Robin Williams’ slow descent into madness). As I mentioned The Mad Hatter is also handled very well even though it just feels like a rehash. Alice McCormack actually worked out pretty well, especially the chemistry between her and Bruce. Occasionally she strays into the crappy territory previously occupied by actresses as disparate as Katie Holmes and Nicole Kidman, but perhaps that can’t be helped. The film is paced quite well. It was quite a breeze to read, and that’s always a plus and not always easily accomplished. Additionally, the dialogue wasn’t very clunky (a tough thing to do with comic book movies).  

Probably at best I could call it uneven. At worst it begins to channel Schumacher.  

50/100