Word: keaton
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...Furst, it seems to be part Transylvania castle, part Star Wars fantasy, part comic book, but mostly a decaying caricature of Manhattan island. The city is covered in shadow and smog. Any superhero who hung out there long enough would inevitably become a bit deranged, but fortunately Batman (Michael Keaton) has a head start...
This is a Keaton familiar from earlier comedies like Beetlejuice. He gets to deliver only a few amusing lines--notably in a scene with Vale and newspaper reporter Alexander Knox (Robert Wohl)--but he delivers them well. And Keaton has a beautifully expressive face; he's fun to watch when the script supports him. Sadly, however, it seldom does...
...goony rogues' gallery. This is a face-off between two men in weird masks: one in a leathery black item out of a dominatrix's pleasure chest, the other with a grin frozen into a rictus. One man obsessed with good, the other enthralled by evil: Batman (Michael Keaton) and the Joker (Jack Nicholson...
Anyone can take pleasure in the matching of Keaton and Nicholson, their dueling eyebrows poised like crossed swords. And Keaton does locate the troubled human inside Batman's armature. He is amusingly awkward wrestling with the threat that Vicki's inquisitive love represents. He knows the world is not quite worth saving, and yet, "It's just something I have to do," he says, "because nobody else can." Same with Nicholson. Who else could play the Joker? He has a patent on satanic majesty. His performance is high, soaring, gamy. He is as good, and as evil, as the film...
...Batman is 50. Who cares? Well, all the fans who grew up with the character in comics and in the popular mid-'60s TV series. And the younger generation, still devouring Batman comics in a new, hipper format. And, next week, moviegoers attending the opening of Batman, with Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne (alias the Caped Crusader) and Jack Nicholson as his nemesis the Joker. In a season when the other big-budget films are sequels, Batman should seem familiar yet fresh. At least Warner Bros., with $35 million riding on the film, hopes...