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The film was pretty cool. Batman (Played by Val Kilmer this time) has to stop two villains, Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and the Riddler (Jim Carrey in another one of his comic performances) from turning Gotham into total chaos. He has a new partner, Robin (Chris O'Donnell) to help him stop the bad guys. The settings are good , as always, and so are the good performances by Carrey, O'Donnell and Kilmer. Kilmer actually comes off well as Batman. I liked Michael Keaton, but he was always being upstaged by colorful villains. But for this movie, Kilmer actually can stay equal with the colorful co-stars.Jones goes a little over the top in his performance as Two-Face. His hamming it up could have been a lot more interesting had Jones worked on it more. Carrey does exactly what Jones should have done with his part. I used to think that the Riddler in the comic books wasn't very interesting. Carrey seems to be able to make a sort of Jack Nicholson psycho type of character, spouting out jokes by the dozen and doing wild and crazy things.
O'Donnell was good as the Caped Crusader's partner. He is much cooler than the old Robin from the TV show. Nicole Kidman comes off a little too much like a stereotype of the "dumb broad", pardon the expression. She's supposed to be a psychiatrist but comes on to Batman once too often. When she does act like a psychiatrist, she spits out psychobabble that most of the audience doesn't care much about. Finally, the critics say it has no soul. What the hell are you expecting from a comic-book!? Shakespeare? Tennessee Williams? I have no idea. Anyway, it is a good movie. It's not like the first two with the angst ridden Dark Knight. More like the old ones that always had Batman and Robin together (like the old Adam West TV show most likely). It's still a pretty cool movie.
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This is not one of Bakshi's best and it's far from his worst (which would be Cool World), but it has it's low points. The story takes place millions of years into the future were there are two races of creature living on the post-apocalypse planet. A race of fairy tale like creatures, (elves, fairies and wizards) have sprung up and live in a real cardboard world of make-believe. The second race is a race of mutants who are lead by a black wizard. The wizard conjures up Hitler's armies to destroy the fairy tale people.The film has its humor spread out enough but, like most Bakshi films, it's uneven. The interesting aspect of the film is that it was the first of Bakshi's films to use rotoscoping (a technique that traces animation from live actors), but other than that, it might not be such a good idea to rent this one, unless you are a die-hard Bakshi fan like me. I like his other stuff (save Cool World) and this isn't all that bad, but be warned about suggestions for this film at parties.
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One of Bakshi's best, It has everything that kids like about films. It has action, a fantasy land, weird creatures and battles between good and evil. Based on J. R. R. Tolkein's classic fantasy trilogy, it's the story of a hobbit named Frodo, who has to take an evil ring with him on a journey to destroy it before it destroys him and everyone else. The rotoscoping in this one is fantastic and the story stays true to the books through most of the picture. The low point is that it ends too abruptly and you don't get to see the real ending that was in the books. In fact, it only goes through one and a half of the entire trilogy. Other than this rather big flaw, it's a pretty cool movie and the kids will enjoy it.
This is Bakshi's second worst film (next to Cool World). The story takes us back to the 1950's, to tell of youth gangs during that era. First off, the music is not right for the era. It's 1980's punk rock and the story takes place in 1953, before rock was even discovered! Plus, the sleazy characters they have boggles the mind. You can't identify with any of the characters, even if you lived around that time. Finally, you can tell that the film was sliced and diced a lot, because nothing really makes sense. There are better films than this around about the 1950's like Rebel Without A Cause. Rent this film, you won't learn much about the fifties.
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