The film’s conscientious farce turns out on re-watch to be a startling exercise in retroactive parody. But the film, and the show for which it’s a feature length ad, that once put the fizzy ’60s at the butt of all its jokes, now has more to say about Hollywood’s biggest super-genre. Eventually someone – maybe a parent, but probably a movie critic – told them that Batman: The Movie was camp and camp doesn’t count for much. In that way it resembles how such a child views the adult world, and all its talking up and down, all its grave riddle-making that from a point of view three feet from the ground just seems pretty darn funny. Batman: The Movie nurtures this effect not only by being a comedy – the religion of adolescence – but by being so with the most perfectly innocent seriousness. This simple truth (more marketing than storytelling) represents an identity disorder inherent in the whole establ ishment, if comics depict a grown-up world that has to look up at itself. Superheroes may be adults, but they must be understood by children. I mean that even though it’s 40 years beyond its reach, The Dark Knight and all its distempered descendants have become the true laughingstock of Batman: The Movie, ably overseen by the super-serious fulcrum of fortitude standing watch in the eye of its comedic storm (and occasionally looking a bit like Adam West).” Myers finds much to appreciate in the now obscure Batman: The Movie. From the text: “The film, and the show for which it’s a feature length ad, that once put the fizzy ’60s at the butt of all its jokes, now has more to say about Hollywood’s biggest super-genre. The recent passing of Adam West – who made Batman his own despite the many higher-profile claimants to the cape – reminds us of the feature film based on the witty TV show.
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