This Town Needs An Enema

Twenty years ago yesterday, my friends and I entered a packed Paramount Theatre in Saint John to watch the premiere of Tim Burton’s Batman. Immediately afterward, I declared it to be the greatest film ever made.

The years have tempered that statement a fair bit. Looking back, for all his visual style, Tim Burton wasn’t very good at directing humans. But the movie did, in many ways, usher in the modern era of comic adaptations although we had to sit through The Shadow and Dick Tracey before we could get to see X-Men and Spider-Man.

In a sense, the 1989 film has more in common with the 1960’s version than the current Christian Bale version with the Cookie Monster voice.

And Jack Nicholson’s line “This town needs an enema!” is really, really dumb.