Quote Originally Posted by Vertigo View Post
Personally, I really don't like Returns at all. Batman is a two-dimensional guest star in his own film, the portrayal of Penguin is just plain hard to watch (not necessarily condemning Danny DeVito's performance - it's the way he eats fish more than anything else...) yet dominates most of the movie, and it's three waterskied metres over a great white on the silliness scale. Generally speaking, in my opinion it's more of a Tim Burton film than a Batman one... that's not a terribly controversial viewpoint though from what I've heard.
One thing I'll laud that film for though is the portrayal of Catwoman, and the dynamic between her and Bruce. Pfeiffer is incredible (screw Nicholson, she gives the finest pre-Nolan series performance as far as I'm concerned), and there's a real tension and chemistry between the two.
A lot of people would argue that Returns is more about the Batman character as the two villains act as cyphers for him.

With Penguin being the alternative outcome to the rich orphan and Catwoman being the alternate outcome to the masked vigilante. They act in exploring where Bruce Wayne draws the line in becoming Batman and where he could and can go wrong.

Also using the "it's more of a Tim Burton film than a Batman one" as any kind of argument against those movies seems to me outrageously ridiculous when you consider Nolan made Batman films so much Nolan films that he couldn't include the range of Batman's exceptionally strong rogues gallery.