thomasellery

I'm no superhero movie fan, in fact I've avoided all of them from the last 20 years or so, but I was a kid for the first Batman wave so this and the 90's outings that followed snuck into my viewing lists.

Rewatching over 30 years later, aside from being freaked out how old this film is now, I was still highly entertained.

Burtons varnishing of a gothic metropolis stuck somewhere between a 40's commercial and Bugsy Malone, adds some cinematic style and the advantage of starting vintage means its look doesn't look dated years later.

Casting is spot on. Keaton is basically to Batman what Sean Connery is to Bond, he nailed it so well at the start everyone after is a copy.

Nicholson is on top form, think The Shining's Jack on acid and he's clearly loving he has a role perfect for him.

They really curated everything well here, every aspect is pretty much at the top of its game. I mean they have Prince doing big chunks of the soundtrack. They knew who to hire!

The plot always had enough going on to keep you watching and although solid, there's nothing complicated to think about. You can just sit back and enjoy your Hollywood ride.

Theres some littie campy comedic bits, which I can't help but think were done to keep it slightly relevant to the only real culture awareness of the franchise at the time, ie the TV show. They're dark enough to be well removed from that level of silly though.

Overall it's a really entertaining summer blockbuster kinda movie. You don't have to be a superhero geek to watch it, in fact it's not going to be anything like today's attempts, so don't let that kind of style stop you watching this one. I'll still say Batman Returns is the better one out this bunch, but nothing made me cringe, except maybe just a couple of visual effects, but on the whole even they still look flawless.

As a generation x'er watching this in 2025, it's like an entertainment version of your teenage trauma that got so drunk at a party it blanked out just how wrong it all was.

At the time and for many many years after, I loved this movie. It's whacky premise, it's rich American suburban dream vibes and the geeks win in the end character arcs. All hit my British teen dreams of what cool was.

Nostalgically it delivers on fashion, pop culture references and the "old school" high school hierarchy, but with that comes the bitter morals and problems we had as teenagers at the time.

Us latch key kids were just left to deal with our own issues and that usually went via the partying and popularity game route, so it's not like the film is totally unaware. At the time there were a ton of movies that were comedic coping mechanisms for teenagers, fuelling the "don't care, let's slack off and have fun " mantra of a generation.

However aside from the pretty sloppy script, ridiculous premise and exaggerated characterisations, some of acceptable norms back then really stand out in modern eyes.

Underage totally inexperienced boys with a mature woman teaching them "the ways", casual racist stereotypes along with a drunken impression of one for a whole car ride home, physically abusive siblings, dating disrespectful men just to stay popular, casual homophobia all completely acceptable and all completely normal. Even small little things like the dad pushing his son away from a welcome home hug, because it's not "manly" stick out to me.

The thing is, these really were all kinda normal then. Even though most youngsters were aware it was problematic, it was a case of deal with it, ignore it and get on with it, but watching today just leaves a nasty feeling of how wrong all that really was and how bad it could be.

I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer about it. I still watch this movie every couple of years, mainly for it's nostalgia and it certainly has its school days memory charm and "just be yourself " messsge, but as time passes it just feels that little bit more "icky" on each viewing.

Breakfast Club, Ferris, Heathers etc all did similar things, but with much more meaning and deeper moral criticism. This is more like the shallow rush job party version of them. It scores of the teenage vibe and having to deal with the then school life but fails on a deeper fight back of the "system". However it's totally soaked in everything 80's right down to the nuclear war paranoia!

Maybe they should show this to generation Z as history lesson of why we partied and what we were ignoring!

It was the 90 s, I was in my early 20's, I caught this movie at the cinema and thought it was awesome. Now it's almost three decades later I dreaded the rewatch in way, because I just knew it was going to be a very 90's affair.

I was right, all those tropes were there, from the badly aged cgi to the frat boy sex pesting that's aged even worse.

Yet despite its keenness to stick in any 90's guitar rift it can find, I still found it nostalgically entertaining. These were the "Chad" prototypes of the time, the kind of dudes who would have The Bloodhound Gang's album and I kinda miss the adventure jock dressed in skater boy clothes.

The plot does pace along okay and there's a fair bit going on. This is pre 9/11 so I'll let the sneaking past security and up the Eiffel Tower pass, but there's a few logistics and injury survivals that need a lot of suspended disbelief.

The comedy aspect is a bit hit and miss, the cafe 'v' condom scene still made me LOL but a lot of it was pretty lame and if it's time.

The cast are all fine at what they have to do, it's all very studio produced and some of the scripting is pretty basic, a lot of which is simply to spell out the plot to the audience.

Overall, yes London is better, but I view this as its own movie and as its own movie, it's just a generic 90's quick buck teen / twenteen horror flick, showing generic quick buck teen / twenteen characters that totally worked for me as its target audience.

Now generation x has firmly grown up, it's not really got much appeal other than nostalgia for the clothes and hot guys.