"Batman Returns", Tim Burton's sequel to his 1989 blockbuster movie adaptation of the Bob Kane DC comic book, opens with Tucker and Esther Cobblepot (two rich Gotham socialites) ridding themselves of their unseen baby boy. This baby seems to have some sort of deformity or monstrous thing about him (i.e. he likes to eat pussy... cats) so his parents throw him in a basket on a park river that carries him below Gotham City's sewers. After 33 years this orphan kid emerges from the sewers as Oswald Cobblepot, AKA The Penguin (Danny DeVito), a freaky-looking dude that's also a member of the Red Triangle Gang that terrorizes the citizens of Gotham when these attempt to light-up the Rockefelle... I mean, the Gotham City Christmas Tree. Cue the Bat Signal, which quickly attracts the attention of Bruce Wayne, AKA Batman (Michael Keaton), and sends him running to the rescue in his rocket-powered Batmobile. Although it initially seems that the Red Triangle Gang wants to kidnap Gotham's Mayor (Michael Murphy) these clowns are really after the city's wealthy patron, the corrupt and unscrupulous Max Shreck (Christopher Walken). Shreck escapes while Batman takes care of business, but eventually winds-up in The Penguin's lair and is lured by the villain into a partnership that will allow both men to take advantage of each other's organizations.

Meanwhile Max Shreck's secretary, the klutzy and ugly-but-pretty-behind-her-glasses Selina Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer), has been having a bad day of her own. After being saved by Batman from one of the Red Triangle Gang thugs and discovering that her boss is swindling the citizens of Gotham with his power plant schemes, she is thrown out of a window by Shreck himself and apparently plummets to her death. After being revived from licks by dozens of alley cats (!) she destroys her cozy little apartment and sews herself a new rubber outfit in the shape of a cat, thus giving birth to Catwoman. You can imagine Shreck's shock when he sees the following morning that the woman he thought he had killed the night before is still alive, but Bruce Wayne (visiting Shreck's office during a business meeting) becomes interested in Selina and the two start flirting. While these two are getting to know each other (unaware of their secret personalities at first) The Penguin emerges from his sewer hideout as Gotham's new hero after staging a mock rescue of the Mayor's son. He and Shreck use the publicity to build a political campaign so that Oswald can have a run at being Gotham's Mayor, but to do so they have to make the local citizens feel unsafe with the current administration.

Batman has his work cut out for him this time. Not only must he expose Max Shreck and Oswald Cobblepot for the frauds they are, but also has prevent The Penguin's Red Triangle Gang from carrying the villain's ultimate revenge plan: the kidnapping and riddance of the first-born male sons of Gotham's elite (as if the opening scene of baby Oswald's basket being dragged by the river Moses-style wasn't a biblical reference strong-enough to make the point he's a tortured soul). He must also deal as Bruce Wayne with his growing attraction toward Selina Kyle and as Batman with the psycho-sexual tension between him and the whip-wielding madwoman dressed in a cat outfit that almost kills him the couple of times they've fought. Eventually these enemies, the hero and his secrets come together in a final showdown at the Penguin's hideout (an abandoned theme park) that has to be seen to be believed... my adults! I felt the graphic violence, electrocutions and deaths of the first "Batman" came too close to an 'R' rating in their intensity and context, but those scenes might as well be part of a "Teletubbies" episode compared with the depraved and nihilistic manner in which "Batman Returns" concludes (Chapters 34-37).

I've seen violent 'R' rated horror movies with a more positive outlook on life than what the dark and cavernous shadows of the towering sets in "Batman Returns" reveal. For the second "Batman" movie in a row the action sequences and stunts also fail to impress, coming across as awkward movements cleverly-edited to make it seem like more than what's actually happening is taking place. Part of me admires the chutzpah that Burton, his writers (Daniel Waters and Sam Hamm) and production crew show in not going for laughs or a sugar-coated happy ending just because the vast majority of the people that went to see this movie back in 1992 were kids. The risqué sexual banter between Catwoman and The Penguin and the obvious S&M visual references when the former and Batman are sizing each other up is the stuff 13 year-old boys (and older Japanese men) fantasize about. But Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle's timid courtship isn't given enough screen time because Burton's more interested in setting-up the rise and fall of Oswald Cobblepot's Mayoral candidacy so that viewers can relate to his eventual return into criminal life. It's almost as if Wayne/Batman and Kyle/Catwoman are relegated to being supporting players in a movie in which the two of them happen to be the primary attraction!

The vacuum left by the absence of a villain/actor as towering as Jack Nicholson/The Joker was in the first "Batman" forced the producers of "Batman Returns" to rely a formula that Warner Bros. used for every live-action "Batman" flick that followed: double-team the villains and cast big stars to play them. Danny DeVito's histrionics as The Penguin don't have the charming menace that made Nicholson's Joker such a joy to watch in the prequel. His character is supposed to be a tortured human being in search for the love he never had as a child, but DeVito's performance and the make-up don't let humanity shine through the smirk in his eyes for even a second (thus killing what little chance the character had of attracting audience sympathy when his time is up). As Catwoman Michelle Pfeiffer exudes pure sexual mischief, and has never been a more desirable on-screen sex symbol than when she slips into her cleverly-designed rubber suit and starts prancing around Gotham with a whip by her side; without her suit she's kind of dull and lethargic, but that's the life of a Batman villain I guess. The Max Shreck character is just plain dull though, with the versatile Christopher Walken playing an even more boring and inconsequential villain than the one he played eight years prior "A View To A Kill").

Last but not least, Michael Keaton's acting chops finally give the Bruce Wayne/Batman persona a believability and conviction in "Batman Returns" that I didn't see in the prequel. He emerges more clearly as a tortured soul desperate to find someone like him, which he mistakenly thinks he has found in Selina/Catwoman. The scenes where Wayne is talking to either Selina (Ch.22) or Alfred (Ch.27) about her failed romance to Vicki Vale are touching without being sappy because the audience can feel how that has taken a bigger emotional/physical toll on the character than his nightly encounters with armed bad guys terrorizing Gotham's population. The final plead to Catwoman during the final scene to join him (Ch.35) rings true with every aspect of the character that has been established up to that point (Bruce Wayne would be more attracted to a self-destructive personality similar to his own than, say, Vicki Vale's). This is perhaps the emotional highlight of the entire live-action "Batman" saga in terms of raw naked emotion being expressed by these flawed characters and their actions. Val Kilmer did a few very good things with his take on the same character three years later in "Batman Forever", but after "Batman Returns" there can be no argument:

Michael Keaton is Batman

. Michael Gough and Pat Hingle also solidify themselves as the best Alfred and Commissioner Gordon to ever appear on a live-action "Batman" project. Also watch for the opening scenes in which Tucker Cobblepot appears on camera, and realize that the actor playing the father of the genetically-mutated Penguin is none other than Pee-Wee Herman his own self, Paul Reubens (talk about typecasting!). It's a shame that the box office take wasn't as good for "Batman Returns" as it was for the prequel. This, along with all the negative publicity from parents outraged at the level of violence and negativity in the story, gave Warner Bros. executives cold feet. They chose to push the franchise 180 degrees opposite of where Tim Burton was taking it, which resulted in the two following sequels losing touch with the character's fan base and the aspects that made the first two "Batman" movies so special. Oh well, better luck with Darren Aranofsky guys!