Waste of time

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Anyone who likes Batman as a campy idiot is not a real batman fan just and twit who has never read a comic or watched Batman the Animated Series. Adam West sucked he was a bad actor and ruined Batman for almost 30's years in the public eye. Batman was created to be a dark brooding vigilante just go back and read some of old comics from the late 30's and early 40's. In some of those early comics he was more akin to the Punisher as he would use guns to kill people. In the 80's Frank Miller helped stopped the awful cliche that Batman was a campy simpleton and made him the Dark Knight we all know today. Batman and Robin (1997) sucked because it was stupid and campy and tried to recreate the Adam West era which also sucked and ruined batman for years. You know who's lighthearted and cheesy? Superman, but no they made him dark and brooding so he'd be more like batman, which doesn't work because Superman is not Batman his costume is bright his villains are campy (though not all he has his share of dark villains and moments too) and he has incredible superpowers. For people who may say they like to see Batman be funny and they don't like normal batman because they think he's an "emo". Batman is not an emo he witnessed his parents get murdered in front of him and devoted his life to fighting crime doesn't sound very emo to me or funny for that matter. But they don't even mention the tragic pasts of Batman or Robin there just two guys who fight crime for no reason. And this entire show was made to make fun of Batman because the creator never read any Batman comics and he just wanted to make money because people knew about Batman. So in all honesty it is fact that if you like Adam West Batman you hate Batman and are not a real fan you just like a stupid show with horrible writing and jokes bad acting that was made by idiots who didn't know a thing about batman thus by proxy making you an idiot for liking this show.

If you read the reviews here on on the IMDb for Batman you will get a huge number of, apparently, critical words used to describe it. Daft, silly, absurd, idiotic, ridiculous & camp etc. All are true but that didn't stop just about everybody loving the show. ME TOO!. I loved it as a 15 year old boy when it first aired back in 1966 & I still love it today 50 years on. Adam West & Burt Ward who played Batman & Robin respectively always kept straight faces no matter how ridiculous the situations they were in, (& some of them were totally mad), but somehow or other it all just worked. Great too were Alan Napier playing the dynamic duo's butler Alfred, Stafford Repp playing Irish police chief O'Hara & Neil Hamilton as Commissioner Gordon. What really made the show, however, were the villains & villainesses some of whom were an absolute hoot!. Frank Gorshin's Riddler, Burgess Meredith's Penguin, Vincent Price's Egghead, Cesar Romero's Joker, Victor Buono's King Tut (playing the ancient Egyptian Pharoah Tutenkhamun), Julie Newmar's Catwoman & Zsa Zsa Gabor's Minerva (who just played herself really, dahlink) were amongst the most memorable although I could go on, & on & ON. In fact practically everyone who had any kind of name in Hollywood at the time made at least one appearance on the show. As the show progressed into its third season the villainous characters just got more & more nuttier. One of my favourites was Barbara Rush playing Nora Clavicle who was flanked either side by two statuesque beauties Evalina & Angelina played by June Wilkinson & Inga Nielsen respectively. Another really dopey character was created for Liberace named Chandell. He was a kind of musical villain & was surrounded by a trio of gorgeous ladies who played the bag-pipes called Doe, Rae & Mimi. (See, I told you how nutty the show became!). Our bag-piping ladies were played by Marilyn Hanold, Edy Williams & Sivi Aberg respectively. Given the fact that Liberace was well-known as a raving homosexual as well as being a brilliant pianist I am sure there was some kind of in-joke going on by the shows producers who surrounded him with hot babes!. As I say the show was very often an utterly hilarious blast!. ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!!.

I never got into the comic books and the one "modern" movie version I saw didn't grab me. I was a kid during its first run and definitely the target demographic. The Special Guest Villains really made the show… we were a family of film buffs and we loved recognizing the villains from other things. Major favorites were Victor Buono as King Tut (how many other 10-year-olds had seen "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane", I wonder?), Vincent Price as Egghead (again, "House of Wax" was hardly a children's movie!) and Roddy McDowall as Bookworm (hey, "Lassie Come Home" was actually for kids!). And naturally, Joker, Riddler, Penguin and Catwoman were always welcome in our living room.I've recently streamed a few episodes just for the heck of it. One featured Liberace as Chandell (very clever name!). I'm not a Liberace fan and he wasn't a favored villain in my youth, but as an adult I got a few really good laughs out of this episode. Firstly, after a robbery at Stately Wayne Manor, Commissioner Gordon picks up the Batphone only to be advised by Alfred that Batman and Robin are on vacation. There's a look of pure horror on his face as he turns to Chief O'Hara and says "I think we may have to… solve this one ourselves!" As a kid I wouldn't have batted an eye; as an adult I cracked up… you mean, DO YOUR JOB for a change? It was a hilarious line and Neil Hamilton really nailed it… I bet he enjoyed the rare opportunity to be a bigger part of the plot. And Stafford Repp got in a few zingers as well, over and above his weekly sigh of "saints preserve us!": at one point, Chief O'Hara decides that snipers with machine guns in the balcony of the local concert hall are the way to deter any possible criminal acts during Chandell's performance, again producing howls from the grown-ups. Fears for Aunt Harriet's virtue are voiced when she visits Chandell in his dressing room… trust me, Aunt Harriet is safe with Chandell (but the Boy Wonder might not have been). The funniest scene by far was the absent Bruce Wayne ruminating that Commissioner Gordon would doubtless have things well in hand and would work tirelessly to apprehend the villain… cut to Commissioner Gordon with a row of large pill bottles lined up on his desk. So stalwart Commissioner Gordon is amped up on speed? Pure comedy gold. The cherry on top of the cupcake was Liberace's performance as evil twin brother Harry the gangster, puffing cigars and talking out of the corner of his mouth; he was quite entertaining as something other than his grinning sequin-studded pianist persona.Recommended for nostalgia factor only… anyone raised on the darker film series probably wouldn't understand. But for a baby-boomer… PURRRRRRRRRR-fect.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday MorningWhat with this being the year of the release of The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan's final instalment of his Batman saga, it's interesting after all his dark, moody exposition on the tale (which, admittedly, suits it better) to travel way back in time with this first live action spin on the comics that you can catch every day on ITV4 in the afternoon. Given the cynical, sniping nature of people today, this poor show will be ripped to shreds in the manner of a pack of wolves pouncing on their prey, but that's not to say it still can't be seen as great fun, unintentionally (probably) hilarious in every way.It's curious, given how seriously everyone involved seems to take it, how silly and laughable it all comes off. Maybe in it's day it sounded more natural, coming from a more innocent time before swearing and violence became more commonplace, but it's hard to imagine even then it coming off without any derision. Adam West plays the part like it's Shakespeare, looking so ridiculous racing around in his silly Batman costume which looks like it came from a fancy dress shop, ditto Robin, Burt Ward's high pitched voice grating on the nerves, and seemingly saying 'Holy' everything. Add to that a 'Bat' this and 'Bat' that and the inevitably corny looking special effects and you've got the recipe for a hoot. And why, if Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson are trying to keep the Dynamic Duo's identity secret, does nobody twig that their voices sound exactly the same?Just like in The Dark Knight and Tim Burton's Batman, the Joker's what it's all about, and just like Heath Ledger and Jack Nicholson's respective takes on the villain made those films what they were, so Cesar Romero's campish maniac brightens this colourful show's style. I would quite gladly have done away with all the other villains who weren't fit to lick his boots, quite a few to get through considering all the other minor, truly pitiful villains, as well as other main players The Penguin and The Riddler. Given how Nolan has tried to give the series a more sophisticated, polished, mature feel in recent times, although the effect may not be the same, it's interesting to look back at when people didn't take things so seriously and the series had a, probably, unintentionally campy, funny edge it possesses tenfold by today's standards. ****