Unfortunately, and unfathomably, Tommy Lee Jones plays the exact same way as Two-Face, traditionally a more stoic character, and the two together are an unwatchable mess.

This could have worked had it only been him playing as such, after all the Riddler is a madcap character. Jim Carrey was, at the time, a bankable star and he was brought on board as the Riddler with his madcap, frenzied acting style. And this permeated all the way through, making the film all rather daft. This, itself, would have been fine, but along with it, the campiness, so synonymous with the 60’s TV show was also drawn into the script. In this regard, he was successful the frames do have a comic-book design to them. And with him there was a massive tonal shift gone was the dark, brooding and violence, to be replaced with more colour and far lighter tone, the idea to be more faithful to the comic-book look. Whilst Batman Returns was a huge financial success, it didn’t earn as much as Batman, therefore the studio wanted a change of direction, Tim Burton was shunted to producer (not that he had much to do with the production) and Joel Schumacher was brought on to direct. So, this was the last Batman film I saw at the cinema until Nolan took over, thus I helped in its financial success.

Batman forever movie review