Batman Returns (Two-Disc Special Edition)
List Price:
Our Price: $4.83
You Save: $22.15 (82%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $3.15 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Christopher Walken, Danny DeVito, Michael Gough, Michael Keaton, Michelle PfeifferBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 126 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-02-10
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of Batman Returns (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Movie Review: A DARK TRIUMPH, BUT A TRIUMPH NEVERTHELESS
Summary: 5 Stars
Few things are as difficult in movie Show-biz, as launching a film that demands a sequel, and then producing a sequel feature that is as good or even better than the original, and here, with BATMAN RETURNS, Director Tim Burton pulls it off spectacularly.
Here, in this review I'm recommending the two-disc Special Edition, though I have the show on a DVD tape, only because this movie is one of the very best examples of the comic book hero genre there is, and has never been surpassed. Whatever form you find it in, treasure and enjoy it.
Beginning at the bottom in a list of superlatives, with overall design and set, viewers will find that this is the best expression of that historical Deco or Moderne style prevalent in the late '30s, when the Batman figure debuted. The buildings express the Neo-Nazi worker hero iconography of Rockefeller Center, as you see it even today in architectural sculpture over the doors and in the open spaces -- as well as in the famous lobby ceiling murals. Its a take-off from the Worlds Fair of '33 and the murals and illustrations of Jon Vassos. And Burton's design team nails it, for though it is in color, it feels nightmare black and white, which is the way people dreampt, back then. The vehicles of the heroes, The Batmobile as well as Penguin's Killer Rubber Ducky are like the toys of the period. The period costumes of all the characters are excellent and hotter, even, than those from older movies and strips.
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN: He plays not the principal villain, but an unsavory one, with a brilliant sociopathic timing that cannot be adequately described. In fact, if one were to review all the many villains large and small that Walken has created on screen, one would have to say these freaks and misfits are his professional specialties, and maybe you'd think creating them is easy to do. Not so. Myself, I remember the first time I saw Walken play, in a revival of Tennessee Williams' SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH in New York City, at the Harkness. He played Chance Wayne against Irene Worth's Ariadne del Lago, and the effect was absolutely unconventional and sensational! Originally, the play opened with Paul Newman as the hustler-gigolo, playing against Geraldine Paige as the faded movie queen in the Mississippi Riviera hotel. Young and hugely talented as she was, Paige played it like her version of Gloria Swanson or Pola Negri, with exagerated make-up. Newman played it in white silk pyjamas, unbutoned and flashing that famous washboard belly. It was fabulous! Women went nuts! It was priceless and worth far more than your seat cost. But the flaw in the production was that anybody taking one look at Newman would realize there was no reason on god's green earth why he shouldn't be a movie star, and the play depended on his beig a failed wannabe. But in the revival, Worth played the Princess like an American actress (which she was, though expatriate) with English upper-crust manners over the soul of a gutter opportunist. Perfect! Walken played Chance Wayne like a young Elvis with a greasy pompadour and a Tupelo Mississippi accent, complete with uncouth, redneck mannerisms. It was a triumph of the actor's art. Here, the role is nothing like that, but Walken brings the same unique intelligence and sensitivity to this role, and if you watch his performance whenever hes's on screen, you'll see how extremely good he is at what he does. Always fresh.
MICHAEL KEATON: He is phenomenal, not because he's super-handsome, or has a magnificent body or an arielist's agility, but because he has enough of what's required for the role -- that is, a manly persona -- and one thing extra: generosity and poise. Bruce Wane's ambivalence, sexual frustration and guilt he can and does play, but what's so good about it is that he allows his role to be the fulcrum or balance of the show, allowing his co-stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny DeVito to function to their advantage. Secure in his character, he never upstages them. That that's the perfect expression of Bruce's persona: He is a violent nocturnalist, but always a gentleman.
MICHELLE PFEIFFER: This is one of the most beautiful women ever to appear on the screen, and she can and does out-act just about everybody in the Biz, and has for years. Here, her take on Catwoman is so rich, so rare and unusual, she puts all preceding sisters to shame, from Lee Meriwether to Eartha Kitt, to Julie Newmar; not only for sexual desirability and believability, but for pure psychotic nymphomania. And, she does it with a look that's perfect for the period, with a head topped by a cluster of blonde curls, and wearing a slinky black dress. Madonna used it in Dick Tracy. Dietrich used it in Pittsburg. But, on top of all that, it is her transformation from frowsy, cringing secretarial doormat to snarling pyromaniac in stiched black vinyl that takes the cake. It is a performance searing in its twisted, pathetic truth.
And now, ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present the one, the only, the superlative DANNY De VITO: This is an actor who's been around the block for a long time. He's given many performances on film, and most of them have been good to exceptional, but he's never had the opportunity to reach for the brass ring of screen monsterdom, and here, in BATMAN RETURNS, Tim Burton gives him the opportunity. And, I must warn you, whether or not you have seen De Vito play it, with PENGUIN or Oswald Cobblepot, Danny De Vito achieves a quality of work equal to that of Conrad Veidt, Charles Laughton or even Lon Cheney, Sr. The peaks and valleys of his frenzies, his manias and perverse lusts, his outbreaks of mindless violent malice, are a sight to behold, simultaneously hilarious and hideous; both pathetic and loathsome. You might think, 'overacting,' but no; its pure Method. Watching BATMAN RETURNS yet again I believe that Burton created this film for De Vito. As good as the other actors in the cast are, and they are excellent, it is impossible to imagine any actor playing this role even remotely as well as De Vito does. It makes you think, if the man could sing, what a RIGOLETTO he would be!
And that brings us down to what there is about the BATMAN opera that makes them unique. More than anything else, this is a set of ensemble pieces like a Hell's Kitchen series of American comedia del'Arte morality plays. The vitality of the show derives from the rigid confines of its convention. Sure, ambitious directors, often foreigners, attempt to pull and stretch the animated figures, to stuff them with fadistic pseudo-psychological theories of their own, but they don't work. The BATMAN shows sprang into life as action fantasies for American pre-teen boys during the years of the Second World War and are thrilling not because they are psychologically plausible -- they're not -- but because they transcend reality the way the marionettes of Palermo do when they re-enact the adventures of Frankish knights struggling against the Saracens before the walls of Jerusalem.
At any rate, take my advice and give yourself the opportunity to watch the great Danny De Vito play. He is as fascinating as Milton's Satan.
Summary of Batman Returns (Two-Disc Special Edition)
Gotham City faces two monstrous criminal menaces: the bizarre, sinister Penguin (Danny DeVito) and the slinky, mysterious Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer). Can Batman (Michael Keaton) battle two formidable foes at once? Especially when one wants to be mayor and the other is romantically attracted to Bruce Wayne! Like the groundbreaking 1989 original, Batman Returns is directed by the wizardly Tim Burton. And like the first blockbuster, it's a dazzling adventure that leaves you breathless.DVD Features:
Documentaries:The Cinematic Saga of Batman, Shadows of the Bat Pt. 4 Beyond Batman Documentary Gallery
Featurette:The Heroes and Villains Profile Galleries
Interviews:The Bat, The Cat, and the Penguin
Music Video:Face to Face by Souixsie and the Bashees
With 1989's Batman, Tim Burton's bold visual style, the late Anton Furst's stunning production design, and the dark dance between doppelgangers suggested by Michael Keaton's tortured Batman and Jack Nicholson's demonic Joker rejuvenated the caped crusader's franchise while setting a dauntingly high bar for any sequel. It's not surprising, then, that 1992's Batman Returns couldn't match the sheer impact of its predecessor, yet the subsequent passing of the baton to Joel Schumacher, and the title hero's retreat to a more conventional persona, make the second Burton Batman worth another look. Perhaps reasoning that the appeal of two dueling schizoids might be upped by adding a third, Batman Returns pits millionaire Bruce Wayne and his alter ego against two equally split personalities, Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) and the Penguin (Danny DeVito). If the equation yields less than the desired sum, it still gives Pfeiffer and DeVito room for oversized, properly gothic performances, and the very feline Pfeiffer, in particular, has a field day. DeVito's cackling, mutant orphan is nearly as riveting, and the story might have fared better if the scriptwriting committee hadn't tossed in a third villain, Christopher Walken's rapacious industrialist, Max Schreck (coyly named for the actor who played the earliest screen vampire, Count Orlock, in F. W. Murnau's German expressionist classic, Nosferatu), thereby pushing the plot toward rococo excess. Bo Welch's production design sustains the brooding mix of deco and gothic established by Furst, and Danny Elfman's dark, stirring score helps pick up some of the slack. --Sam Sutherland
Similar DVD Movies
The Incredible Hulk (Widescreen Edition)Uni; Release date: 2008-10-21; DVD
Best price: $5.84
Price in other shops:
Batman: Under the Red HoodRelease date: 2010-07-27; Amazon Instant Video; Movie
Best price: $2.99
Catwoman (Widescreen Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2005-01-18; DVD
Best price: $1.26
Price in other shops:
Batman Gotham Knight (Two-Disc Special Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2008-07-08; DVD
Best price: $6.67
Price in other shops:
Batman: The Movie (Special Edition)Fox Home Entertainment; Release date: 2008-07-01; DVD
Best price: $3.97
Price in other shops:
Batman ForeverWarner Brothers; Release date: 2009-02-10; DVD
Best price: $6.42
Price in other shops:
Batman Collection: Four Film Favorites (Batman / Batman Returns / Batman Forever / Batman & Robin)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2009-09-29; DVD
Best price: $9.85
Price in other shops:
The Dark Knight (Single-Disc Widescreen Edition)DC Comics; Release date: 2008-12-09; DVD
Best price: $1.94
Price in other shops:
Batman (Two-Disc Special Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2009-02-10; DVD
Best price: $5.10
Price in other shops:
Batman Begins (Single-Disc Widescreen Edition)DC Comics; Release date: 2005-10-18; DVD
Best price: $2.88
Price in other shops: