This week at ComicsAlliance, I am once again in the business of, as Benito Cereno put it, telling people why they shouldn’t like the things they like with the first half of our in-depth review of Batman Returns!
Spoiler Warning: It makes no sense and that costume sucks. Deal With It.
I think you mean Part One. Hopes dashed, yet again, by the-isb.
Yes, I mis-typed. Apologies all around.
I had totally forgotten that Burton did Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. Of course, in my defense, it is visually unlike pretty much any other Burton film I can think of.
Upon reflection, I think they stole Lionel Luthor’s hair in Smallville from Max Shreck (and I wonder who had the idea of using the name of the actor who played Count Orlock).
I agree that Chip Shreck is fantastic, but did anyone else notice that while it is an impression of Christopher Walken, he also reminds you of Donald Trump? Does this mean that The Donald’s public persona has been just a bizarre Christopher Walken impersonation all this time? I ask because, if true, that might be the one thing that would make me think of voting for him.
Aww I like catwoman’s costume, it reminds me of Vivenne Westwood. Ah well, the review was funny anyway.
I love that nobody bats and eyelash when Penguin bites the guy on the nose. How did that not make the news? Where’s Knox for cryin’ out loud!?
You don’t like Hudson Hawk? Now you’ve gone too far, Sims!
I liked that they took the piss out of all that Joseph Campbell stuff with the Penguin’s origin, so was disappointed when Burton applied it wholeheartedly to his Alice film. I also liked
that Max was the only good parent in the story. Everyone else’s parents screw them up, one way or another, but Chip’s fine. I took it as a dark comment on Bush the First’s “Family Values”. That is: you can be a great parent and an otherwise lousy human being.
You make some very interesting points David, and I think you’re onto something with your reference to the Bush/Shreck family comparison. I could imagine Chip Shreck growing up to be every bit the powerful and destructive idiot ‘W’ was, although in a business context rather than political one.
However, whilst I agree with you about the ‘good parent/lousy human-being’ comment with respect to Max I’m not sure what you mean by ‘everyone else’s parents’. Obviously The Penguin’s parents abandoned him but other than them we don’t encounter anyone else’s parents in the film. Although Bruce was left an orphan at an early age his parents were preumably good people and Alfred appears to have been a caring surrogate father, and it is merely implied that Selina’s mother is a nagging nuisance rather than a genuinely ‘bad parent’.
I love the euphemistic “I thought she just went … well, she just went all CRAZY WOMAN like she was in a Brad Meltzer story.”