TROUBLE IN GOTHAM CITY

By RICHARD CORLISS

Every movie, it now seems, is a sequel of every other movie. Writers pick over the carcasses of hit films and try to extract the golden elements for their own projects. Why, it's Die Hard in a minivan, or Pretty Woman but with Lassie and Beethoven, or Terms of Endearment only she gets the Ebola virus. It's filming by numbers-last year's box-office grosses. The uniform look and feel of recent films suggest that the mad scientists in A Clockwork Orange had it wrong. You don't make a viewer a zombie by force-feeding him scenes of sex and violence. You do it by making every movie a dull retread, in a Mobius strip of mediocrity.

In this dumbed-down universe, the prospect of Batman Forever gave some hope. The series' first two films, directed by Tim Burton, were the top summer hits of 1989 and 1992; Batman Returns was also a wonderful film. Joel Schumacher, director of Forever, hasn't Burton's creepy poetic vibes, but in The Client he showed real storytelling talent. He also wanted to give the series a fresh look, with a new Batman-Val Kilmer for Michael Keaton-in a new costume and car, both retooled in fine Corinthian leather. Even Gotham gets a make-over.

The only thing Schumacher and his scrupulous craftsfolk forgot to give the movie was life -- the energizing spirit of wit and passion that makes scenes work and characters breathe. The script, by Lee Batchler, Janet Scott Batchler and Akiva Goldsman, settles for the stale pose of antiheroic dialogue and TV sitcom irony. Barbara Ling's sumptuous production design is mainly a reminder of better, quirkier films (Blade Runner, The Hudsucker Proxy). The special-effects aces have created a big destruct-o-fest, with explosions all over Gotham, yet the film is pizazz deficient. A series of set pieces with no forward momentum, Batman Forever drags laboriously, as if the Batmobile were being towed away with the emergency brake still on. The picture leaves thick black skid marks.

The plot? Umm, we've forgotten it -- probably a threat to Gotham by some bad people -- but we know there was a lot of it. Lots of characters too. Robin (Chris O'Donnell) joins the series, which undercuts Batman's heroic loneliness. Nicole Kidman, as the requisite love interest, is little more than a party decoration. And two villains are too many. Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face and Jim Carrey as the Riddler have dueling star turns, with Carrey winning, of course; he can torture the most innocent banalities, like a simple "Well, yes," into delirious comedy. At the end he's still there, potentially available for a fourth Batman.

And so the cycle continues. Maybe someone will bring vitality to the next film. This one just gives viewers a deeper case of the been-there, seen-that blues.