Rating: 
In "Batman Forever," our tormented superhero gets the quintessential '90s cure-all: therapy and a makeover.
The counseling comes courtesy of Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman), a ravishing psychiatrist who helps Batman work through some of his notorious personal problems.
The makeover is the work of director Joel Schumacher, who turns Tim Burton's Gotham City into a loud, campy disco and gives Batman a new body suit that appears to be taken from the Mapplethorpe collection. (On a subtextual level, this movie is brazenly determined to remind us that underneath it all, the caped crusader is really just a guy named Bruce. )
And that's the fun part.
The rest of "Batman" is pretty dispirited - the kind of second-sequel mop-up effort you'd expect when the series starters leave and the studio brings in the B team.
Schumacher replaces director Tim Burton, who created the creepy mood that made the first two movies work. Val Kilmer replaces Michael Keaton as Batman/ Bruce Wayne, and strains to find something in the script that will make his character interesting (the first two movies pretty much exhausted the dual persona thing).
All the actors here share Kilmer's problem. Even the promising addition of Tommy Lee Jones as the acid-scarred Two-Face, Jim Carrey as a manic Riddler and Chris O'Donnell as a muscular, punky Robin prove hugely disappointing.
Everybody is stuck in a badly underwritten, joyless story - the Riddler and Two-Face form an alliance to kill Batman, using as many elaborate traps as possible. Story and character development are secondary to the overall goal - an immense expenditure of money and energy on production design.
And yet, given the amount of care taken to create the movie's lavish sets (one was constructed in a 140,000-square-foot aircraft hangar), it's amazing that nothing here really leaves much of a lasting visual impression.
This is a product of sensory overload. "Batman Forever" counts too much on its gizmos, gadgets and elaborate backdrops, all presented with an over- edited zeal that becomes irritating before the movie is 10 minutes old. The constant sonic pounding of the insistent, orchestral score makes things worse.
Kilmer underplays Batman with a Clint Eastwood whisper, while Kidman, Jones and Carrey chew scenery to make up for blatant shortcomings in the script.
"Am I over the top?" the Riddler asks at one point. "I can never tell. "
In this context, a plaintive cry for help.
At times, the screenplay is even sub-literate.
"I've dedicated my life," Bruce Wayne says, "to protecting strangers I've never met. "
Newsflash, Bruce. If you'd met them, they wouldn't be strangers.
