You'll love them, yeah, yeah, yeah It's "Yesterday: A Tribute To The Beatles," June 30 at the Power Center. Tickets are $12-$18; call 764-2538 for more info. What's next, Elvis impersonators? A iTn Sait A~i -s Wednesday June 28,1995 Schumacher's 'Forever' changes > By Michael Zilberman Daily Arts Writer With the very first lines of dialogue, spoken a couple of seconds into Joel Schumacher's "Batman Forever"(Alfred: "Can I persuade you to take a sandwich?" Batman: "Thanks, I'll get drive-thru"), it becomes clear the Batmobile had crossed Tim Burtonville's corporation limit and headed into quite a different terrain. The idea of the caped crusader grabbing a brown-bag lunch is comedy; the following thought of Batmobile driving up to McDonald's is broad farce. OBatman Forever Directed by Joel I Schumacher; with Val Kilmer and Jim Carrey At Briarwood and Showcase | To call the third installment in the se- ries a departure from the original would be a monstrous understatement: it's a complete rethinking of the concept. The sadomasochistic pleasure of "Batman Forever" is, basically, in watching Schumacher flesh out Tim Burton's trade- marks and off them one by one. Start with the vision of Gotham as Fritz Lang's nightmare. The creators of "Batman Forever" push the movie back to comic-book aesthetics, trading Burton's exquisite steely palette for ma- niacal splashes of purple, red and slightly nauseating green. Even if it lends the movie a faint "Dick Tracy" feel, it's still mesmerizing to look at. The undercurrents of alienation and du- ality, time-honoredlButon staples, also get a light treatment from Schumacher (who would imagine that the author of "Falling Down" would be the one to lighten things up?). Everybody in the film is a human Ying Yang - Batman, Robin, The Riddler, Harvey Two-Face - yet both the heroes and the villains are amus- ingly self-conscious about their double identities: Robin goes through the list of "sidekick names" ("Batboy? Nightwing?"), and The Riddler actually composes his audacious alter ego on the computer. This sort of pop schizophrenia reduces any moral issues to self-mocking fluff. The Riddler even mentions Freud in one of his monologues. Erotic tension, ridiculously overhyped this time around (Bat-costumes with nipples, hurrah!) is something Tim Bur- ton preferred to address implicitly. Schumacher, on the opposite, makes heavy breathing a musical leitmotif: Kidman and Kilmer have what was aptly described as "a love triangle with two people involved" (she's torn between Bruce Wayne and Batman). Edward Nygma, the future Riddler, is weirdly ob- sessed with Wayne, down to collecting newspaper clippings. Harvey Two-Face has a girlfriend for each side of his splitper- sonality -Sugar and Spice. I only regret- ted O'Donnell's Robin and Barrymore's Sugar didn't have a scene together. Two-Face and the Riddler marvel at how tiny 'Batman Forever"s plot is. Finally, the casting is also decidedly non-Burton. Michael Keaton would shrivel up and die at the prospect of hav- ing to dispense bon mots such as "Chicks love the car," but Kilmer pulls it off, cre- ating some sort of a rock'n'roll Batman - with this guy at the helm, it's easy to imagine the Batmobile stereo blaring out "Break On Through." O'Donnell, on the other hand, is a reserved, introverted Robin - the film even incorporates an ingenious riff on the enormously annoy- ia "Nn' th E-nr-th at- 'Batman" beyond it. Tommy Lee Jones, although surrounded by cool gimmicks (Barrymore and Debi Mazar, unfortu- nately, fall into this category) is here at his barking worst - his character's two feuding brain hemispheres might as well have been extracted from Ty Cobb and Clay Shaw. Jim Carrey, as expected, takes the movie by storm. His Riddler, unlike Harvey, has a motivation - he's a pathetic loser whose ambition and IQ are slowly devouring him from the in- side: a Stanley Ipkiss who never met his SEE BATMAN PAGE 10 'Pocahontas' ignores the facts but entertains By Heather Phares Daily Arts Editor Disney paints itself into a controversy- filled comer with its latest animated tour- de-force "Pocahontas."The film alleges to be an historical document of the Native American princess' encounter with the English explorer John Smith. Yet certain critical details of the story have been changed to shape the tale into Disney's pat- ented romantic fairytale format - most glaringly Pocahontas' age, which has been boosted from a definitely preteen 11 to an early 20-something -which perhaps de- stroys the film's historicalintegrity but ar- guably makes for an easier story to sell to a young audience. Indeed, the movie is al- most as fictional as the studio's classic fairytales, because it too revolves around a make-believe love affair; for while Pocahontas and Smith were lifelong friends, they were neverromantically involved. Also distressing is the way "Pocahontas" stereotypes the English settlers and the Native Americans in the film, albeit in a P.C. way. Pocahontas' father Chief Powhatan, her suitor Kocoum, friend Nakoma and the rest of her tribe pretty much follow the standard mystically taciturn Native American type, while the English are callous and gold hungry invaders that are so stupid, it's a wonder they made it across the ocean. Few of the characters on either side have much, well, character, because they're bound to how the members of each group are supposed to act. And paradoxically for such a politically correct movie, Pocahontas stuts aroundin a buck- skin minidress with an off-the-shoulder neckline, all the better for showingoff her bountiful cleavage and endless legs. The latest fashion in 1607, doubtless. Putting aside such weighty matters as Pocahontas Directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg; with the voices of Irene Bedard and Mel Gibson At Briarwood, Showcase and Ann Arbor 1 & 2 cultural imperialism and historical revi- sionism, however, "Pocahontas" is an en- tertaining and well-crafted film that chal- lenges Disney's typical modus operandi: Even though Pocahontas isn't really sup- posed to be the age she is in the movie, at least she's a mature-looking work of fic- tion. Unlike the freakishly bug-eyed waifs that proliferate in Disney's other features, Pocahontas has a womanly voice (thanks to Irene Bedard) and figure, and features that are definitely more ethnic than those of most of Disney's snow-white heroines - a step in the right direction. In keeping with the "accuracy" of the film, the drawing style and characters in it are also more realistic than in previous Disney films. The characters and settings are rendered in an elongated, angluar style that complements the serious sub- ject matter;hardly a cutely anthropomor- phized plant or critter exists, with the big exception of Grandmother Willow, a 400 year-old tree spirit that acts as Pocahontas' counsel, kind of like Ann Landers gone to seed. Pocahontas' other non-human friends, Meeko the raccoon and Flit the hummingbird, are cute as can be - but remain mute, thankfully. The Native Americans in the film are drawn with great bearing and dignity, but the English are drawn and quartered: With the exception of the studly-yet-some- what-plastic John Smith, they're either clumsy, heavy oafs or skinny, pop-eyed SEE POCAHONTAS, PAGE 10 Pocahontas: Beauty and the beast. .t Espresso*"*Cappuccino * Gourmet Teas i Fresh French Pastries * Yerba Mate * Haagen Dazs Ice Cream Mediterranean Salads Spinach & Cheese Pies Fresh Juice Dar Deli Sandwiches 0*ouhUnvrst, rbrM 414 6-80 West Side Book Shop since 1975 Used & Rare Books Bought & Sold 113 W. Liberty (1/2 block W. of Main St.) 995-1891 It's Worth the Trip!