"From looney to batty"... or "Less than the sum of their parts"

Tim Burton is an imaginative enough guy. He's pretty much capable of painting some really oddball and unusual visuals on the screen that, with few exceptions, I find rather fascinating.

But in general, I find that he really can't keep a whole movie true to that quirky vision of his. It's like he caves too easily to the typical screen-tested, conventionally-wisdomic Hollywood establishment. That, or he pre-caves, and is the go-to guy for when the establishment needs to trot out their token "wierdo" for when they feel they need to prove they're more than just a bunch of mediocre hacks.

But it's not that convincing.

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is definitely not deprived of quirky, oddball visuals. In fact, scene-for-scene, there's a lot to like about any particular shot or sequence. In fact, many individual parts, like the Oompa-Loopas all being the same guy, are quite hilarious. And the visuals are quite stunning and imaginative. They even got Alan Greenspan to play a role (*cough*). But when you try to put all this together in the context of a narrative, or even just a cinematic experience, it falls flatter than a 2-year-old bottle of RC Cola forgotten in the back of a Dodge minivan.

Which is a shame, but kind of predictable given his history. All his films tend to be that way ever since "Edward Scissorhands" and "Beetlejuice". The turning-point in particular, in my opinion, was "Batman: The Movie".

In the spirit of full disclosure, I was so incredibly dissappointed in that first attempt at resurrecting the "Batman" franchise. I was a big fan of Frank Miller's take on "The Dark Knight", and eagerly awaited the movie's release in hopes of it capturing that dark, angsty spirit. I even had the leaked copy of the script that was going around my film school program.

And when I finally saw it, I was so extremely dissappointed that it completely ruined the franchise for me. And what Burton did with "Batman II" was so much worse that I didn't bother watching any of the others ever again.

Until tonight, when I watched "Batman Begins".

It was touted as "a good 'Batman' film". And, you know, in a lot of places, it was pretty darn good. It definitely captured a lot of what I had hoped for in the Tim Burton effort. But still...

I hate to say it, but even though individual scenes and moments did pretty well on their own merit, and had some excellent castmembers, the whole thing tied together fell flat. Yeah, that flat.

It could be that some of the key parts of the actual comicbook narrative were totally tossed. When Bruce and his parents were out on the town, they were supposed to see "Zorro", not some stupid opera with bats in it. The young Commisioner Gordon wasn't some nerdy wimpy guy.

And, the most heinous transgression -- the same transgression that Burton made in "Batman II" -- is that the "leading lady" is given Batman's identity as Bruce Wayne. I mean, really, WTF?? The whole point of being a shadowy costumed vigilante is that you have a dark secret that you can never share. Yet, in Burton's folly and in this one, you might as well tell the whole f*-ing world.

There are other flaws too. Enough that it kind of took me out of the whole story and made me think that this was just another "cave-in to the Hollywood mainstream" at the expense of what was really a pretty good story to start with.

So for both movies, I really did enjoy certain specific aspects, but as movies on a whole, they really fell short. Dissappointing, but not particularly surprising.