Batman Forever (1995)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Phil H

  
  The last Batman movie before the crash, this is still pretty cool, its lost allot of the gothic touch but not tooooo over the top on the neon camp look, its just right...almost. Its just Kilmer isn't that good, his Batsuit is probably the sharpest of all the films in my opinion… More
  The last Batman movie before the crash, this is still pretty cool, its lost allot of the gothic touch but not tooooo over the top on the neon camp look, its just right...almost. Its just Kilmer isn't that good, his Batsuit is probably the sharpest of all the films in my opinion but I prefer Keaton. Carrey and Jones save the day as the villians lets be honest, their lunacy is funny and creative but they do seem alittle too similar for my liking but Carrey is just perfect. Less said about the nightmare that was 'Robin' the better but to be honest its handled reasonably and could of been worse. Overall for the time it wasn't too bad and it certainly did well, the Batmobile still looks awesome too.

• Unknown H

  
  The best ... and I mean THE BEST Batman movie.

• Alexander D

  
  Suffering the "threequel effect" from beginning to end, BATMAN FOREVER is a tedious superhero movie. It now stars Val Kilmer as the titular character, a less believable Batman than even Michael Keaton, who was a hard one to take into mind. And along with the whole… More
  Suffering the "threequel effect" from beginning to end, BATMAN FOREVER is a tedious superhero movie. It now stars Val Kilmer as the titular character, a less believable Batman than even Michael Keaton, who was a hard one to take into mind. And along with the whole superficiality of the plot, the villains aren't all that great either. The three previous villains were the Joker (Jack Nicholson), Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Penguin (Danny DeVito). Now, we have another duo, consisting of the Riddler (Jim Carrey) and Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones). Unlike in BATMAN and BATMAN RETURNS, these villains are more silly and ridiculous than creepy. Just look at the DVD box--their outfits give away all the asininity. Should you see this? I wouldn't recommend it. If you do, will you like it? It depends if you can stand Jim Carrey in more than just comedy and drama.

• Daniel M

  
  Changing the director in the middle of a franchise can create seismic differences in the quality of the respective instalments. Sometimes this is for the better: Alfonso Cuaron lifted the Harry Potter series with Prisoner of Azkaban, bringing a real sense of magic and wonder where… More
  Changing the director in the middle of a franchise can create seismic differences in the quality of the respective instalments. Sometimes this is for the better: Alfonso Cuaron lifted the Harry Potter series with Prisoner of Azkaban, bringing a real sense of magic and wonder where Chris Columbus had failed on both counts. On other occasions, such as this one, the franchise does not benefit, resulting in a film with none of the weight of Tim Burton's instalments and which is nothing more nor less than a little bit boring. The key to understanding Batman Forever lies in the relationship between Tim Burton and his replacement Joel Schumacher. Despite having left the director's chair after the mixed reception of Batman Returns, Burton stayed on to produce the third instalment at the behest of Warner Brothers. While this did not give him anything resembling creative control, it did give him a certain amount of power on the set, so that he could always step in if he felt that things were going too far off the rails. As a result of Burton's presence there is some degree of continuity between the universe of Returns and Forever. Despite its gaudier design and campier style, it doesn't feel entirely like you've switched over to the TV series right after watching the second film. Certain sections, such as the death of Bruce's parents, have been reshot so that they retain their existing composition but with the new colour scheme and editing style. By making the head of Arkham Asylum a goofy-haired man called Dr. Burton, the series tips its hat to his style and sensibility, acknowledging that without him we would never have got this far. But while we are ostensibly in the same Gotham City, the emphasis has been shifted away from expressionist architecture and dark anti-heroes, and onto something a lot more frivolous. Where Burton uses style as a means of expressing deeper themes or character traits, Schumacher is all about style for its own sake, and never mind the story. This reflects their respective beginnings as filmmakers: Burton cut his teeth in animation, creating drawings which had to speak a thousand words, while Schumacher started out designing costumes for Woody Allen's Sleeper. What we end up with is a film which is lit to within an inch of its life, but scripted to a bare minimum. Like the TV series, there is a central plot which is relatively thin and largely implausible, around which action set-pieces can be positioned and stretched out for as long as is necessary. There are big references to Schumacher's back catalogue throughout - the street gang with fluorescent make-up are a re-tuning of the vampires from The Lost Boys, while the scenes with Nicole Kidman's psychiatrist tread very close to the dialogue in Flatliners. Batman Forever is often cited as the point when the Batman series shifted from being about the comics to being about the merchandise. Many fans have cited Val Kilmer's opening lines about "getting drive-through" as the moment at which the franchise jumped the shark. There is a large amount of truth in this: the shift towards brighter colours, sillier villains and the increased hardware available to Batman points towards a desire to sell action figures and lunchboxes rather than something more grown-up. But while there is a market-driven edge to this Batman instalment, it is not as crass or as cynical as it could have been. The plot is at best ironic and at worst duplicitous - creating an evil weapon which warps people's minds through television, when whole sections of the film resemble a commercial, at least in the way that they are lit. But it doesn't force the merchandise down the viewer's throat like Batman and Robin did, and compared to the work of Michael Bay it's totally harmless. For its first 45 minutes, the predominant reaction to Batman Forever is not betrayal or disgust but boredom. The opening set-piece, involving Two Face's elaborate heist and a safe full of acid, feels dragged out and is played for laughs way too obviously. The stunts become increasingly preposterous and the supporting characters have less personality than in the Burton films. Whereas in Batman Returns there was a sense of all the villains and some of the bystanders having minds of their own, the security guard in the bank is confined to whining "Oh no!" with increasing desperation. There is less of a role for Pat Hingle as Commissioner Gordon, and Michael Gough is increasingly sidelined. During the set-pieces Schumacher's love of aesthetics becomes frequently overbearing. In the sequence on the rocks near the Riddler's lair, there is so much green on the screen that you can't see what's going on. It's like watching Flash Gordon without the wit or directorial vision. The performances reflect this sense frustration. Val Kilmer is a plank as Bruce Wayne, and has an off-putting, haughty quality which conveys that Kilmer thought he was above the role. When he's in the bat-suit, he unwittingly pouts in almost every scene, as though he saw wearing the mask as an excuse to stop acting, at least with his face. Jim Carrey does an awful lot of gurning as Edward Nigma, and he only stops being annoying when he's being reined in by Tommy Lee Jones, who genuinely gets the character and seems to be having fun. Nicole Kidman, whose character was written specifically for the film, spends an awful lot of her screen time doing nothing but wandering around in a little black dress. Like Kim Basinger in the first film, whatever attempt is made to build her character up as intelligent is eventually undone; she ends up as a damsel in distress, accompanied by a gratuitous upskirt shot as she falls out of the tube. And Chris O'Donnell never entirely convinces either as Dick Grayson or as Robin. When he pretends to be Batman while facing the street gang, we're laughing at him as much as with him. However, after we have cantered through the Riddler's backstory and drunk our fill of pouting, whinging, gurning and flirting, Batman Forever finally kicks into gear and starts to have a plot which feels like it has something to say. It stops being an overgrown kid playing with toys and becomes a film about repression of childhood memories. Where the previous two films dealt with Batman as an outsider, who may be no better than the villains he is fighting, Batman Forever asks the question of whether Bruce Wayne can ever live with himself, as Batman and as a fractured human being. There is continuity from Batman Returns in the role of women; Chase makes a passing reference to Catwoman on the rooftop, and she proves instrumental in helping Bruce come to terms with himself. The point seems to be that the central dilemma of Batman is always the same - where does the man end and the bat begin, both in terms of personality and in terms of authorit. The various villains or sideshows which Batman encounters are just different ways of asking the same questions, whether through violence (Two-Face), riddles (The Riddler) or seduction (Chase). Considering what happened with the sequel, one could argue that this is just a ploy to have infinite new villains turn up in infinite new films, but at least the film has the guts to raise one of the central issues of the comics, even if it handles it with kid gloves. Batman Forever is a noisy, incoherent and often dull third instalment of a franchise which was already showing signs of fatigue. For all its good intentions and attempts to grapple with several ideas, it never follows through enough with any of them to cut the mustard, resorting to special effects to disguise Schumacher's shortcomings as a storyteller. But despite this, it's passingly entertaining, with Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey eventually coming through with the goods as a double act. It's a consistent and inoffensive disappointment; if only the same could be said for the sequel.

• Eric A

  
  From a critic standpoint it's bad, but as a child it was action packed, funny, and cool. Descent movie for what it was, and for being a 90's superhero movie.

• Drake T

  
  If it weren't for Carrey's Riddler, I would have had a hard time finishing this movie. But I digress, it achieves what it sets out to even though for the most part you can't help but wonder if it was worth it. It's like a terrible fusion of Adam West Batman with… More
  If it weren't for Carrey's Riddler, I would have had a hard time finishing this movie. But I digress, it achieves what it sets out to even though for the most part you can't help but wonder if it was worth it. It's like a terrible fusion of Adam West Batman with Burton's style fused with new-age technology of neon lights and flare. It's big, loud, but rarely ever fun. Watchable? Sure why not.

• Melvin W

  
  Two-Face: Don't worry, people, no need for alarm, it's just a good-old fashioned, low-tech stick up! We're interested in the basics: cash, jewelry, cellular telephones. Just hand them over nicely, and no one will be hurt. What Schumacher did with Batman Forever and… More
  Two-Face: Don't worry, people, no need for alarm, it's just a good-old fashioned, low-tech stick up! We're interested in the basics: cash, jewelry, cellular telephones. Just hand them over nicely, and no one will be hurt. What Schumacher did with Batman Forever and Batman & Robin was pretty disgraceful to where Burton had Batman going in the first two movies. Burton had Gotham City looking dark and Shumacher came along and made it look like a disco. There's lights flashing everywhere and it's really just annoying. Then there's the villains; there's Two-Face and The Riddler. Both are played extremely over the top. I feel that Tommy Lee Jones pulled his off, but I really don't think that Jim Carey was able to pull off the extremely over the top Riddler. The other characters of interest include Bruce Waynes new love interest played by Nicole Kidman. It's one of her few performances I don't liked. Then there's Batman, played by Val Kilmer in this one; which is a step down from Michael Keaton in the first two. While there's all these things I don't like about the movie, somehow I still find myself enjoying it. It's undeniabley entertaining. It's still a complete shame what Schumacher did though.

• Lucas M

  
  Forever forgettable.

• AJ V

  
  With a new director and main actors, comes a new style of Batman movies, a more silly one-liner joke version of Batman. It's a lot different from Burton's films, and not in a good way. Still, the story does continue to follow the comics, unlike the newer movies. This… More
  With a new director and main actors, comes a new style of Batman movies, a more silly one-liner joke version of Batman. It's a lot different from Burton's films, and not in a good way. Still, the story does continue to follow the comics, unlike the newer movies. This movie is pretty ridiculous at times, but it does have Jim Carrey as the Riddler, which is perfect casting, and it does have a bit of good humor here and there. It's not a waste of time, it's just not the best Batman movie.

• Michael E

  
  A great and entertaining film, i mean its not one of the best superhero films but it had a lot of fun moments and entertainment factor.

• Matt G

  
  Christian Bale is really good in this! Oh wait... it's Val Kilmer. Eh, seen better. Good story, good action, terrible casting.

• Jeff "

  
  Joel Schumacher follows in the footsteps of Tim Burton to borderline results. I enjoyed Batman Forever, I thought the film was entertaining and had interesting characters. But I do agree that compared to the first two, Batman Forever is of course the weakest. When this came out I was… More
  Joel Schumacher follows in the footsteps of Tim Burton to borderline results. I enjoyed Batman Forever, I thought the film was entertaining and had interesting characters. But I do agree that compared to the first two, Batman Forever is of course the weakest. When this came out I was ten years old at the time and I knew who Schumacher was because he The Lost Boys, and I saw that one when I was eight years old. So I thought it was going to be great, and it was. At the time. Over the years I rewatched the film, and still enjoyed it, but I noticed all the obvious things that ever Batman fan found ridiculous. Nips on Batman? Wtf? and enlarged codpieces. Two aspects of the batman suit that were carried on in the following film, Batman & Robin. For me what really made this film worth watching was Jim Carrey as Edward Nygma/The Riddler. I thought his performance alone made the film much better than it is. The film is of course silly, but it's nothing compared to it's follow up film, Batman & Robin. The film for me at least, is not as bad as its sequel, and does manage to entertain. But compared to Burton's films, this film is pretty weak. I view this film as a guilty pleasure, which most certainly plays out like one. Batman Forever is not a bad film, but it's not great by any means either. Batman Forever is average entertainment and can viewed as a watered down film because of the violent content in Batman Returns. The studio felt it was necessary to make this film friendlier and less dark and violent. Batman Forever is an average film, nothing extraordinary, but nothing awful either. If you want the worst Batman film of all, view Schumacher's Batman & Robin. This film has enough good things to keep one entertained, but don't anything truly great.

• David L

  
  Bruce Wayne (a.k.a. Batman) has a new nemesis in the shape of Two Face (Tommy Lee Jones) a homicidal psychopath who was once a noble lawyer, only for his face and mind to be hideously deformed after a substance was thrown over him in a courtroom. But he's soon to be joined by… More
  Bruce Wayne (a.k.a. Batman) has a new nemesis in the shape of Two Face (Tommy Lee Jones) a homicidal psychopath who was once a noble lawyer, only for his face and mind to be hideously deformed after a substance was thrown over him in a courtroom. But he's soon to be joined by another: The Riddler (Jim Carrey) who was a former scientist at Wayne Enterprises and had his ideas rejected by those in power. Whilst dealing with all of this, he entertains a romance with the beautiful psychologist Dr Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman) and takes a boy acrobat under his wing whose family were murdered in a hesit by Two-Face, who will come to be known as Robin, the fateful sidekick... This is a whole new Batman, with a lighter, sillier, more family friendly appeal to it, with a new actor playing Batman in the shape of Val Kilmer and a new director in the shape of Joel Schumacher, after Tim Burton had left to pursue greater things such as The Nightmare Before Christmas (although he does take over producing duties here.) I suppose it is all really a question of whether you prefer the dark or the light versions of Batman. But I know which camp I'm settled in. There is a lot of light and flashy effects in this one, but it is completely empty. The story is uninvolving, the characters naff and the acting poor. For starters, there's the impossibly wooden O' Donnell, who wouldn't go on to improve in any of his future projects and is at his worst here, and also in one scene zooms down a road in the Batmobile (which he's souped up!) to which a flock of girls crowd round it, which I think played a part in kick-starting the whole vacuous 'chav' craze, as well as Batman's subliminal messaging at the beginning with the line 'it's the car, right, chicks dig the car', when in fact ten years later, a whole string of Brian Harvey-alikes would be 'digging' the car. In the villain roles, Carrey can either make you laugh with his manic performances or he can severely get on your nerves, and that's definitely the case here and Jones can play a great villain and is trying his best here, but it's all just wasted on him. Kidman is very sexy as the love interest, but doesn't manage to contribute anything other than that. As Batman, I suppose Kilmer doesn't do anything Keaton didn't do but, as far as the original cycle of Batman films I'll stay a Keaton man... I suppose in the end your enjoyment of this film will depends on whether you're a dark Batman fan or a light Batman fan.

• Veronique K

  
  batman was introduced into theater in 1960s (that campy kiddie movie), then disappeared for two decades (70s~80s) until tim burton brought it back to motion picture in 1989...since them, batman's become a part of pop-culture genealogy, a figure audience takes into serious… More
  batman was introduced into theater in 1960s (that campy kiddie movie), then disappeared for two decades (70s~80s) until tim burton brought it back to motion picture in 1989...since them, batman's become a part of pop-culture genealogy, a figure audience takes into serious account. tim burton puts a sophisticated air on batman thru two aspects of bruce wayne/batman: firstly burton emphasizes bruce wayne's haunting nightmares after he witnesses his parents killed by an outlaw. secondly, burton gives lots of passages on how bruce wayne cannot successfully cope with his dualistic lifystle, and how he cannot really keep a sustaining love-interest or a life of norm. it's like, this rich man who is blessed with everything: wealth, looks and intelligence, and he could get and attract as many elitist beauties (women with breed, beauty and brain) as he wants, but somehow his inward imbalance just keeps him from enjoying his previledges in life. (plainly, he's too fucked to have a good time in his yacht and roadsters) philip marlowe was the vigilante folkhero before superheros like batman started to reign cinema, and philip marlowe is an ordinary proletariat tough guy who pracitces justice with self-help due to his angst-ridden disgust with the filthy rich. (anti-authoritarian mindset)...on the contrary, bruce wayne is the upper-class genteel who teams up with police bureacracy to erase crimes. in other words, vigilantism was originally repulsion against the filthy rich (hard-boiled dective in 1930s) until it gets domesticated into a guilty remorse from the idol rich who feels compelled to compensate the mass, as if bruce wayne is punished for being rich, handsome and successful, and he has to tear his normalcy apart to serve the crowd, prohibited from idle pleasure like bathing under the sun in his villa with nothing to do. (get this ideology?)...anyway, my point is: batman has followed this pattern built by tim burton without too many changes, whehter it's joel shcumacher or christopher nolan, their batman stories all develop from bruce wayne's childhood trauma and his incapability to lead a nomal life with his fabulous girlfriend...thus it is tim burton who sketches the genealogy of batman, nothing is changed except the forms of styles and other minor details to complicate the legend. what makes batman forever interesting in a way? its villains: the riddler (jim carrey) and two-face (tommy lee jones), particularly the riddler. most people who watch it seem to focus on the part of its flamboyant action sequences (style over substance) and its cheesy user-friendliness for introducing the character robin and lightening the dark hues of tim burton's batman (remember, the credit says it is STILL a tim burton production, but burton just didn't care that much anymore to direct it himself)...since 3D movies become a popular thing because of avatar, and now any action movie is made in 3D to chiesel some bucks from the audience. the funny thing is the crisis in batman forever is ABOUT 3D TELEVISION! can't you see how avant-garde it was to discuss 3D television in 1995? reading those negative criticism the movie script seems to cast on 3D television does amuse me greatly now..see the conservative attitude 1990s had for 3D television, which is made possible right now! the chaos created by the riddler in batman forever is that he uses the 3D television set to absorb the brain waves from people in gotham city to enhance his own intelligence, then he even devises new ways to intercept confidential informations from his consummers, like credit card, bank account and personal secrets (metaphor of internet!)...and the procedure jim carrey selects his costumes as the riddler reminds me of how my friend chooses his costumes for his online war of warcraft game. see the similarity? the riddler is the 1990s prophecy of what we see today around us: geeks, online-gamers, trolls and net-surfers. and it was made before matrix(1999)!!! bruce wayne's comment on edward nygma (before he turns into the riddler) is: manipulating brain waves could be dangerous..and 3D television is dangerous, and to shatter the boundary between public and private spaces is dangerous! now it's all happening today! see how many people's credit card numbers are stolen by the hackers! as for two-face/harvey dent, it is weird to see tommy lee jones back then after watching aaron eckhart's macabre performances in dark knight, but there's still some quaint pleasure in viewing schulmacher's way to depict this character with such neat stylization and easeful cartoonization. two-face here is the deranged, disfigured version of 1930s mobster, such as edward g robinson and james cagney's gangster pictures. and two-face here, like the mobster, has two mistresses: one moll and one doll (drew barrymore) to flaunt his split selves. you cannot see such humourous cynicism metaphorized into tongue-in-cheek puns in christopher nolan's solemn weepers! and tommy lee jones' two-face is a cartoonized homage to the nostalgic gangseterism in cinematic history! can't you see the parallel?! also, drew barrymore in 1995 does look like jean harlow in public enemy! barrymore's wardrobe and her ultra-thin eyebrows do project a jean-harlow-esque air. maybe because she's john barrymore's grand-grand daughter, no wonder she could render such classic look so well! <div style="width:713px;"><a href="http://www.flixster.com/photos/drew-barrymore-batman-forever-lookalike-13947631"><img src="http://content9.flixster.com/photo/13/94/76/13947631_ori.jpg" border="0"/></a><div style="text-align:center;font-size:10px;"><a href="http://www.flixster.com">Flixster</a> - Share Movies</div></div> casting val kilmer, who was formerly famous for playing jim morrison in oliver stone's the doors, as batman is an attempt to sensualize bruce wayne. just pay attention on how the camera lingers over batman's crotch and his "rectrum" (i must say what an ass!) in several scenes and how nicole kidman fantasizes batman as the sexy wrong kind of man and would like to "get under his cape" for a good time...batman here is fetishized as the object of woman's wet dreams, and it wasn't like that in michael keaton's batman and christian bale's batman is too sad to think of getting laid. (ha)..i must say val kilmer is the sexiest batman with his juicy pouty lips under the mask, and he's probably sexier (ok, to me) than christian bale with his patrick-bateman killer-body (i still think american psycho is his best performance..sometimes i feel he's like an over-laboured sex-machine who never enjoys the idea of sex.). don't you miss a bit over the time when batman was a great sexpot for you to have flirtatious dallidances with? huh? (or it's just me...) at last, the weakest point in batman forever is probably the introduction of robin, who represents the juvenile attempt in vigilantism, and the ending of robin and batman united to fight against the crimes officially terminates the edginess of batman story! thus superheroism became a joyride in disneyland since it's doable thing now for reckless college boys and mindless adolescents. schulmacher's overt domestication of batman does bring commercial gross which is reflected in the enormous financial gain of its sequel, batman and robin., but it's critically bombarded since the essential ideology of batman in pop-culture genealogy is: he should never be happy, never get laid and work his ass off to serve an angry, ungrateful crowd. (purtianism)..but come to think about it, my comment is: val kilmer was way too sexy not to get laid (lol), especially when he was paired with a 28-year-old nicole kidman in her full-bloom beauty.

• Carlos M

  
  With unbelievable dialogues, goofy action and ridiculous caricatural characters, this softened Batman attempt after Tim Burton's films is just embarrassing and laughable, with a pathetic story full of plot holes. Not even Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey can save this nonsense.

• Conner R

  
  You know, this isn't all that great of a Batman adaption, but it's extremely entertaining and priceless. The crazy colors and set design make this truly one of the most cartoonish movies ever made, along with its sequel. Val Kilmer dominates the screen as a very different… More
  You know, this isn't all that great of a Batman adaption, but it's extremely entertaining and priceless. The crazy colors and set design make this truly one of the most cartoonish movies ever made, along with its sequel. Val Kilmer dominates the screen as a very different type of Batman. He's a lot more sexualized than any version of the character, most of the movie revolving around his laying of Chase Meridian in Bruce Wayne form. Jim Carrey might just give his most zany performance of all time, he is just so flamboyant and nutso as The Riddler. Joel Schumacher really had a different vision going on than Tim Burton, mainly being so much more animated and colorful. It also is riddled with comedy and unintentional humor. I can't say that I like this rendition as I do the Burtonvers or the Nolanverse, but both this and Batman and Robin are unforgettable in terms of how bizarre and outlandish they are.

• Richard C

  
  C+

• Lenny M

  
  Val Kilmer, decent Batman, villains not realized well, plots sucked. Schumacher trying to make the movie flamboyant instead of dark. Update: Just watched my VHS copy of this, dude the villains are sooo bad, Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones really sucked d here, Schumacher's D.… More
  Val Kilmer, decent Batman, villains not realized well, plots sucked. Schumacher trying to make the movie flamboyant instead of dark. Update: Just watched my VHS copy of this, dude the villains are sooo bad, Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones really sucked d here, Schumacher's D. There's a 98% chance that Chris O'Donnell joined in. I think I was out of line saying that Val Kilmer was a decent Batman, but if you compared him to George Clooney; wow don't do that. Very Homosexual, no disrespect, but Schumacher movies are sometimes vessels to channel his gayness, notice the zoom in on Val Kilmer's rubber butt in the Batsuit, coincidence? Maybe some people like that (Schumacher) but it doesn't fit Batman.

• Jennifer D

  
  I should probably see this again. I barely remember it.

• Wahida K

  
  Oh do I have to repeat it again?

Read all 20 featured audience ratings