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CRAP FILM GREAT SOUNDTRACK
Batman Forvever The mid-90's for comic book fans were pretty grim. Darkman, The Phantom and Spawn remember them? No? Well Batman fans will remember this horrendous Joel Schumacher effort until the day they die. Following on from the world created by Tim Burton the Batman Forever universe was less eerie gothic extravagance and more weird high camp carry on. Not that there is anything wrong with a bit of the latter, it's just that . . . well it's not Batman. Kilmer phones in one of his laziest performances; his punishment was a role in 'The island of Dr Moreau' and a decade in the wilderness. Spare a thought also for poor Chris O'Donnell who had the pleasure of playing Robin whilst wearing a costume all too reminiscent of the gimp in Pulp Fiction. As a result he can now be seen almost solely in television roles. You see for me, Batman is the only acceptable comic book character. Spiderman is a nerd, Superman is dull, the X-men are confusing and the Hulk is for children. Batman may be badly dressed and grumpy but he has a fast car and loads of survival gadgets. Essentially he is the crime fighting lovechild of Jeremy Clarkson and Ray Mears. Yet this film ruined it all for everyone and almost killed the notion of a respectable superhero dead (it was eventually smothered to death in the equally cringe inducing sequel Batman and Robin only to be revived a decade later in the gritty Batman Begins). Yet Batman Forever is not quite a total loss because it has the most splendid of soundtracks. Schumacher may have turned the visual franchise into a children's story but all the audio is geared towards a mature and discerning adult audience. Few of the artists who appear on the soundtrack were mainstream in 1995. The Flaming Lips, Mazzy Star, PJ Harvey, and Nick Cave are serious musicians who you would assume would be more at home providing music for an art house effort, as opposed to a film about two vigilante's running around in PVC conversing in monotone. What's even more spectacularly bonkers about the soundtrack is the epic theme song 'Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me' from none other than U2. Back in 1995 U2 seemed at their artistic low point, they were experiencing the usually fatal big band midlife crisis phase. 1993's Zooropa saw them start to dabble with dance music, Bowie a far more gifted musician had failed this already. It took U2 until All That You Can't Leave Behind in 2000 to ditch this reinvention. 'Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me' is the band's best single from 1993 till 'Beautiful Day' seven years later because the band stuck to what they were good at, namely rousing rock songs utilising Bono's undeniably excellent voice. One band who crop up on the soundtrack who cannot claim to have any sort of singing voice are The Offspring. Yet on re-listening to 'Smash it Up' its clear that the south Californians were capable of knocking out a decent pop punk tune prior to all that 'Fly For a White Guy' nonsense of later years. Bizarrely for a band now thought of as a bit of a joke they seem to hold their own when played with the rest of the soundtrack. Whether anything from their post-1995 albums would is open to debate. Anyway moving on . . . Seal just about steals the show with 'Kiss From a Rose'. The fact this song won a Grammy sadly means that there will be at least some critical success attached to Batman Forever. Its quite unsettling to hear it now and think about how little he has done since, when its obvious he had an inestimable level of vocal talent. Granted he's probably got more than a few sovereigns in the bank, but for somebody with the ability to craft such a perfect love ballad to be artistically forgotten seems to me a waste. Track Listing:
By Hammond |
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