Starring: Michael Keaton, Danny Devito, Michelle Phieffer

Rated: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hrs.

 

 

      I had hoped that this time around Mr. Burton would try and lighten the mood, especially since this is a Christmas movie. My hopes were dashed apart, terribly so, by this, one of the worst and grossest sequels I have ever seen. But let's begin at the beginning, shall we...?

 

 

       A baby is born to the Cobblepot family, but it is so ugly and deformed that the parents throw it into a river in a basket. The basket runs beneath the sewers and eventually makes it to an underground level of the abandoned Arctic World, where a family of Penguins find it and apparently adopt the little monster. This lousy sequence took up the entire opening credits, but moving on...

 

      Thirty-three years later BatMan has become the hero of Gotham City. Rumors of a mysterious "Penguin Man" living under the sewers has caught the headlines, but is met by many as nonsense. During the lighting of a Christmas tree in the Public Square a gang called the Red Triangle crashes the festivities and tries to abduct business man Max Shreck (no, no relation to the green ogre). He gets away as BatMan fights off the gang, but it does Max little good for he gets kidnapped anyway. He wakes up to find himself in the lair of the Penguin, a horrible little man with a long nose, fat body that Kathy Smith could do nothing for and inhuman features all around. He reveals to Max that he knows of his shady business dealings and even murders within his own organization that Max authorized, and he scares Shreck into helping make an entrance into society.

 

      You see, supposedly the Penguin wants to be accepted by the world like everyone else, to find his parents who threw him in the sewers and live above ground like any normal person. But he fears his appearance is against him, so he needs to do something spectacular to gain the public's eye. So with that he stages an abduction of the Mayor's baby at a public speech Max sets up, and then he saves the baby with the Press all around to shine the spotlight on him.

 

       Meanwhile Max has a secretary named Salina Kyle, who is basically a forgetful lonely ditz and is getting nowhere in her life, though she is highly intelligent in her own right. One evening she is looking through some top secret files of Max's and finds out more than is good for her, and Max discovers this. He pushes her out of a window and she plummets to the ground, taken for dead. Somehow she survives and in a mental snap she trashes her apartment and takes on the guise of CatWoman, a sort of Anti-BatMan. She saves people from crooks, but at the same time she wreaks havoc of her own.

 

       BatMan begins to get suspicious of the Penguin, and learns that the ugly little man is the ring leader of the Red Triangle, which is made up of former circus performers of which the Penguin once was one as a freak show attraction. Soon the Penguin makes his intention clear that he desires to be the mayor and impeach the present one. The CatWoman meets up with the Penguin and they both conspire to get BatMan framed for murder so they can get free reign in the city. So now BatMan has not only two villains and the police to contend with, but little does he know that Salina Kyle, the woman he is attracted to, is also one of his enemies.

 

       This is without a doubt one of the worst movies I have ever watched, but not for the reasons most would express. The special effects were amazing, awesome really, the music was up to Danny Elfman snuff and quite haunting and exciting, and even the story was better than the last one, but then came the death blows. This movie was SICK. I can't even begin to remember all of the scenes that made me barf. The Penguin is without a doubt the most disgusting, ugly, vile villain that has ever existed, but even then you can do those things and make it tasteful. There ain't nothing tasteful about the way the Penguin is presented in this film. He drips green crap from his mouth, he looks like he was dug up from the grave for this role, he actually BITES a guy on the nose, spilling blood everywhere, and he is a total sexual pervert. Absolutely disgusting.

 

       Plus it becomes clear by the end of the film that his only intention in life is to kill every child in Gotham City since he feels bitter over being abandoned. Stupid! The CatWoman is made into the main love interest, which is ludicrous. BatMan goes out of his way to let her do stuff to arouse him, to which she returns with punches scratches and variable other assaults, and yet the idiot still lets her work on him. Imbecilic! And once again we have no clue why BatMan is BatMan. No explanation again, and as seems to be Tim Burton's style, the development of BatMan's character is not even a part of the story. This movie is basically the development of the characters of the Penguin and CatWoman, and BatMan is just thrown in as an afterthought. In short, this film really, really sucks.

 

       The worst part is that this film is set on Christmas, but it should be set on Friday the 13th. As great a downer as any film I have ever watched. The first one looks utterly tame compared to this piece of junk. My advice is unless you are a lover of the Bat and you want to watch all of his film adventures, then go ahead, but this is NEVER a family film! It was rated PG-13, but I highly question that rating. My conscience felt guilty after I had seen it because I could have sworn I had just seen an R movie.

 

 

 Story: 1/2 Not horribly sensible, and far too gross. Again, no boundaries of right and wrong. Just poeple fighting each other.

 Acting: Devito did a good job for what it's worth as the sniveling evil Penguin, and Michelle's CatWoman was slinky and well played, but what you call Keaton's acting I don't know

Special effects:  As bad as the film was, the effects were still pretty incredible. Why can't Burton combine good FX with a good story?

 Language: As usual, the language be bad. It really hinders the entertainment experience in my opinion.

 Sexual content: The Penguin, as mentioned, is a crude sex hungry pervert, BatMan and CatWoman get under each others' masks and there a few sexual references and jokes.

 Heart enlightenment factor: ZERO!!! Big fat 0. This film had not only the task of giving me no emotional good feelings, but it had the opposite effect. I felt sick to my stomach after seeing this film.

 Soundtrack: Despite it all, Danny Elfman's music is the bomb. He's not to blame for the terrible movie, so I respect his score.

     

 Overall: 1/2 I really, really did not like this movie. If I was supposed to be entertained it rarely happened. Don't let children near this...treat it like the plague!

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