Batman Forever

Riddle me this: What's critic-proof, will set opening-day box-office records and simply cannot be too loud or bombastic for its audience?

OK, so maybe that's a grade-school question.

But in the cinematic world of commercial cunning, "Batman Forever" would seem to have all the elements properly fitted together.

Where pictures like "Die Hard With a Vengeance," with its R-rated excesses and racial pretensions, and "Casper," a comedy for the preteen set that somehow feels the need to explore the afterlife, will probably do a slow fade after early box-office splashes, "Batman Forever" seems more likely to hang on throughout the summer — and beyond — simply because it is so satisfied with being just what it is.

The motion picture equivalent of a Twinkie, this is simple, high-cholesterol entertainment that doesn't pretend to be anything else. But it's also a fast-paced, visually stunning, wild-eyed action flick that has cleaned up the language, violence and sexuality enough that parents won't mind if their kids go back to see it again. And again. And again.

This time out, our psychologically damaged superhero (played by Val Kilmer, whose lips make him look like Michael Keaton when he's under the mask) is the object of revenge by a pair of very different villains — Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and The Riddler (Jim Carrey), who eventually team up to go after him.

Two-Face is former Gotham prosecutor Harvey Dent (played by Billy Dee Williams in the first film), who blames the Dark Knight for his face being horribly scarred on one side, which has contributed to his dual — and dueling — personality. And The Riddler is actually Edward Nygma, a nuttyprofessor who works for Wayne Enterprises until an obsessive invention — a machine that sucks brain waves out of television watchers — pushes him over the edge.

Plotwise, that's about it. And there's no question that the film would be more satisfying if it had pursued the latter element, going for some media satire.

There are also two major subplots worth noting. The first sets up the partnership between Batman and Robin (Chris O'Donnell), a circus performer whose family is killed by Two-Face. And the second is Batman's tentative romance with psychiatrist Chase Meridian (Nicole Kidman), who first falls for the masked man, then his alter ego.