Millions upon millions of people enjoy collecting things; from dolls to stamps to coins to trading cards and coins, it's a collector's world out there. Writer/Director Michael Wayne, however, just doesn't "get it" in any meaningful way, shape or form. His documentary BATMAN AND ME (2020) is a dreary death-march through a particularly OCD toy collector's collection of Batman items. It is tepid and over-long and redundant but its greatest sin is that fails to examine its subject with any depth of understanding.
Aussie toy collector and small-time filmmaker Darren Maxwell seems a likable enough fella; documentarian Wayne spends an interminable 1 hour 24 minutes working at showing his small obsession - a small room filled with Batman merchandise, most of which is from the 1989-1997 Tim Burton films - as some sort of albatross around his neck.
True, collector Maxwell is more than a bit compulsive - his obsession with all his collection being "Mint in Box" seems strident, even for a toy guy, and he seems unnaturally dull about his possessions, professing that he knows little about Batman as a character or about the history behind the merchandise - but there is no evidence presented of his collection hurting his life or impacting him in any substantial negative sense. Indeed, his wife seems to enjoy it and, even more, appreciates his enjoyment of it, he still has collector friends, and Maxwell alludes to many happy moments collecting with his friends and decades enjoying collector's conventions, but all that seems discounted with the general tone of disapproval that worsens as the film drags towards its end. The use of toy figures in pedestrian "re-enactments" is cloying and adds nothing to the film. It is so dully written (and lets also indict co-writers Andrew Martyn and Rebecca Richardson here) that it sputters to a close with Batman toys being dumped unceremoniously into a wastepaper basket.
I've been a collector of toys, comics, and other strange stuff for over half a century and I've known dozens of collectors; far and away most were happy in their environment and most really understand the endorphin rush that the collector feels in the pursuit of that "Holy Grail" object in whatever their area of interest. People outside of collecting fail to understand that this rush is not unlike those of other human pursuits like fishing, hunting, car refinishing, carpentry, or a thousand other passions; and it is similar to the more dangerous rushes of tobacco, alcohol, drugs, and gambling. And all of those things are interesting fodder for a well-made documentary, which BATMAN AND ME is decidedly not. Rarely has a filmmaker seemed so out of touch with his subject or with the only audience - collectors - that might be at all interested in his subject.
