Down And Out In Gotham Town- “Batman” (1989)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Phil Larkin

Batman, starring Jack Nicholson, Michael Keaton, Kim Basinger, 1989

WTF. Yeah WFT I am still standing although for the life of me I don’t why after the screed I ran through in the last film review I did if you could call it that Marvel Comics’ The Avengers. WTF too that I am still doing kids’ silly super-hero comic book airheads turned to the multi-plex screens all because everybody, boy or girl from the look of things, between the age of about eight to twenty-one no longer can sit through the twenty minutes it takes to read a comic book. Said kids will only sit through a couple of hours of swill, as long as the dialogue doesn’t exceed short sentences and grunts, there is kick-ass action every thirty seconds for no apparent reason, and there is an ample supply of vat- tubbed butter-drenched popcorn and gigantic refillable soda cups.

Although you and I both know if you have been following this race to the bottom of filmdom being forced on me with this brainless twit stuff that this is the first stages of a purge by the recently installed new leadership which seems to be making every effort to get rid of the old writers who held this operation together in the days when the assuredly purged, don’t believe that voluntary retirement stuff, Allan Jackson (aka Peter Paul Markin on this site) was made to fall on his sword. We who voted for his retention, meaning against the installation of the new pope Greg Green and his flunky Ed Board, are expected to follow suit. And assuredly as well the quickest way to get rid of senior writers is to give them assignments picking up the popcorn tubs and soda cups after a bunch of lazy kids who won’t read.          

Here is the latest step in the big step-off for this writer in this space (needless to say I won’t give them the satisfaction of quitting even if I do take that now obvious big step-off-no way). Greg Green has ordered me put on “probation” and hence this disciplinary assignment from hell  (yeah, yeah through the Ed Board but even those know nothing eight to twenty-one year olds know this has the earmarks of the “boss” making the decision and not some hireling nonsense). The reason? Well off that last review if not the first one there are a million possibilities. Start off with my WFT assorted languages that might offend those eight to twenty year olds who emphatically don’t read much less peep at screed-like film reviews. Even there PG parents don’t care as long as they don’t hear their precious Jills and Johnnies don’t use that language around the house. How very liberal. But strangely, or maybe not so strangely since “teacher’s pet” Kenny Jacobs mimicking me started using salty language that is not the reason. Although given this new crew’s kind of left-handed way of doing things since Allan’s purge now that they have wind in their sails that could be the disguised reason. Probably not though since in some weird modern let’s be hip and let everything but the very worse language slide through they are catering to that younger crowd which see the whole thing as picturesque. How very liberal.       

       

You might think that daring them to print that last damn review after skewering not only the film’s reasons for existence but basely calling the whole thing an empty shell would be the reason. After all a bad review, which by the way Alan Jackson cared less about which way the review went as long as it was well-written and less than three thousand words (so he didn’t have to pay a premium bonus number of words although in cyberspace being meaningless). This crew from what I have heard in order to grab some extra revenue is taking “advertisements” from the movie companies in this space. And the surest way to lose such lucrative emoluments is to have one of your writers declare their whole operation a house of cards. Call the whole thing a charade, an insult to the intelligence of amoebas and sea pods. However Greg mentioned to, I think, Lance Lawrence that these modern day studios still work on the old premise that the only bad publicity is no publicity. So no sale.      

You might think, and again be wrong, that skewering the characters and their personal identities would draw the line and put me beyond the pale. Calling patriotic Captain America a brawny brainless twit who would be hard-pressed to figure out how to use a spoon if he ever had occasion to use one. Ditto the Hulk except dumber when he goes off the deep end and turns into a green balloon-ish cretin. Calling beautiful Thor a wooden head, as wooden as those Valhalla Viking ships that faded from history fast for no known explanation except brain death. Sorrowfully calling Black Widow nothing but a commie bitch, eye candy for the jet set, and not to be trusted under any circumstances. Mutants, social misfits and rogues all. Even the brainy Ironman who in the end didn’t want to play ball, thought for at least a minute that going after a half dozen well-recognized thugs didn’t require making half of  humankind “collateral damage” in their wide-open wake, got all crazy and stuff.       

No, the reason if you can believe, this that I am on “probation’ is that as has been standard policy at this site since the old days when Sam Lowell, now really in retirement but of late muzzled, ruled the roost as official Senior film critic, a title now abolished in the new ‘democratic’ era that I did not give an adequate plot-line summary. What? What plot beyond kick-ass bad guys every thirty seconds in between gulps of soda or throated popcorn for the audience and don’t get any scratches on the uniforms or one’s person. Does it matter if the “enemy” is Hydra or Thor’s aunt? No, I think not and so there is the very real substance to my feeling that my days in this space are numbered. Once they say they have a pressing assignment for me out with the now exiled Allan Jackson out in Utah I can kiss my ass good-bye.    

That brings to the so-called plot-line of this Batman film from 1989. I am doomed anyway so once again I will say –what plot. Batman, played by mild-mannered Michael Keaton in between bouts of going under the Wayne mansion downy billow beds with investigative reporter Kim Basinger has a run-in or seven with the Joker, played by living maniac Jack Nicholson, who got caught short in an acid vat after killing his mobster boss which skewed his personality quite a bit although he was always a thug. In the end, ho-hum, the Joker takes the big fall, takes the trip six feet under. Any more plot line than that Greg Green can sue me. Enough said.