There’s no fun machine this summer that packs more surprises. For all the homogenizing, Batman Forever still gets in its licks.

There is also a new array of what the Joker calls wonderful toys, including a Batmobile that climbs walls and a Batwing that morphs into a Batsub.ĭon’t puke. To add to the doppelgänger motif, Two-Face hangs with a pair of sexpot sidekicks named Sugar (Drew Barrymore) and Spice (Debi Mazar), tosses a coin disfigured on one side and uses a chopper to split Gotham City’s Statue of Liberty in two. Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman) a partner in crime fighting, Robin (Chris O’Donnell) and two adversaries, the Riddler (Jim Carrey) and Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones), both with split personalities. Batman and his billionaire alter ego, Bruce Wayne, get a new love interest, Dr. Schumacher keeps the movie spinning like a pinwheel it’s a thrill-packed joy ride that knocks itself out to please - so much so that it often threatens to collapse from plot overload. Schumacher’s method is to use a lighter touch, to stay closer to the cartoon that Bob Kane created for DC Comics in 1939 and to temper Burton’s nightmare world with an accessible, brightly colored TV palette. Instead, the new film catches the campy innocence of the Batman TV series of the ’60s.

Batman Forever, with Joel Schumacher ( The Client) in for Burton as director, goes easy on the mayhem and doesn’t dwell on our hero’s pesky depressive side. Except for Michelle Pfeiffer’s whip-smart and sexy Catwoman, it left a sour taste.

Audiences, not just the Dole contingent, were turned off by Burton’s grim and disjointed 1992 sequel, Batman Returns.

This 1995 version has cleaned up its act. The third Batman epic, with Val Kilmer replacing Michael Keaton as the Caped Crusader and Jim Carrey out-mugging Jack Nicholson’s Joker as the rascally Riddler, is a long way from the dark poetry of Tim Burton’s 1989 original.

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