Batman Forever

The second sequel to Tim Burton's 1989 blockbuster makes its predecessors appear models of subtlety and coherence. In theory the film marks a new lease of life for the caped crusader (new star, new faces, new director); in practice everything about Forever feels stale and self- conscious. Kilmer is a more sensual Bruce Wayne than Michael Keaton, but if anything his remodelled body-tight Batsuit proves even more of a straitjacket. As in Returns, our hero has to fight for screen time with not one, but two scene-stealing villains, Jones's (wasted) Harvey Two-Face and Carrey's Riddler, plus the love interest, Kidman's ludicrously perverse shrink Dr Meridian. As if that's not enough, he's been stuck with a partner-in-crimebusting, O'Donnell's butch young Robin, obviously designed to broaden the demographics (the queer styling even runs to a fetishistic close-up of the Bat-butt). The perfunctory plot concerns the Riddler's mass-marketing of a televisual brain drain.