Batman

Washington Post Hal Hinson

The movie fixes you in its gravitational pull. It's an enveloping, walk-in vision... As rich and satisfying a movie as you're likely to see all year.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

It's a rare, beautifully made movie that offers you another world. [23 June 1989, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

In short, Batman is terrific - funny, smart and sensitive too, the perfect cinematic date.

Variety Staff (Not Credited)

Nicholson embellishes fascinatingly baroque designs with his twisted features, lavish verbal pirouettes and inspired excursions into the outer limits of psychosis. It's a masterpiece of sinister comic acting.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

The Batblast of the summer.

Empire Andrew Collins

Jack Nicholson as The Joker helpfully provides all the colour.

USA Today Mike Clark

There's a cold intelligence at work here. Though its pleasures are plentiful enough to reward a second viewing, only Nicholson has saved Warners from a wing-clip. [23 June 1989, Life, p.1D]

Chicago Tribune Dave Kehr

Burton's Gotham City-constructed on a massive sound stage in London- is a striking blend of spindly gothic, decaying art deco and broodingly bland institutional architecture that seems to lie just a couple of subway stops down from Ridley Scott's ''Blade Runner'' and Terry Gilliam's ''Brazil.'' It's great to look at, but we seem to have been here before. [23 June 1989, Friday, p.A]

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

It's relatively easy to convey the claustral in interior scenes, but [designer] Furst and the director Tim Burton do it even when the setting is a great flight of steps before the municipal building or the huge square where Batman and the joker confront each other. [31 July 1989, p.24]

The New Yorker Pauline Kael

It has so many unpredictable spins that what's missing doesn't seem to matter much. The images sing. [10 July 1989]

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Batman is largely content to skim the surface and bask in the light of its visual style.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

It would be a lot better if it didn't lean exclusively on bone-crunching action for its climactic thrills, and the story continues long after its ideas have started to sag. [29 June 1989, Arts, p.10]

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

The main problem is that Burton operates best on a modest scale; saddled with a blockbuster, he doesn't know how to animate all the dead space.

TV Guide Staff (Non Credited)

Despite its interesting, grim tone and undeniably striking visuals from director Burton and production designer Furst, the film fails to synthesize its strengths into a compelling whole.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The movie's problem is that no one seemed to have any fun making it, and it's hard to have much fun watching it. It's a depressing experience.

The New York Times Vincent Canby

It's neither funny nor solemn. It has the personality not of a particular movie but of a product, of something arrived at by corporate decision.

Los Angeles Times Sheila Benson

The Joker has been demoted into a broad-scale sociopath, without a tempter's power or a mythic villain's complexity. And that's the movie's real undoing. [23 June 1989, Calendar, p.6-1]