BATMAN RETURNS makes no sense. I love it.

It is Christmastime and around our house, that means watching Christmas movies and Christmas-themed episodes of our favorite shows from November 1st to December 25th. When you set aside a timeframe as large as that one for watching Christmas shows, you're guaranteed to dig deep into the bag to pull out movies not typically associated with the holiday. White Christmas, Elf, Home Alone, and other classics are great for the handful of days leading up to the big day. What do you watch when it's still...

*cracks open the window*

65 degrees Fahrenheit out there?

Where I live the weather is still pleasant enough that it hardly feels like the holiday. It's almost nonsensical to watch a Christmas movie right now, so what better one to watch that one that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever...

Batman Returns was Tim Burton's follow-up to the monster smash hit from 1989, Batman. The first film can only be described as a box office and merchandise juggernaut and though Burton had little interest in making another, the studio did not want to rock the boat and risk messing with a winning formula. The director agreed to return on the condition that he be given creative control over the story. Warner Bros. agreed and, without realizing it, rocked the boat and messed with the winning formula. Tim Burton had no interest in making another Batman movie. After being paid a ton of money to make the sequel, he still had no interest in making another Batman movie...but he was happy to take WB's money and make a Tim Burton movie, and that's exactly what he did.

The trouble was, the movie he made---a melding of Burtonesque ideas and Batmanesque trappings---is completely bonkers, often in all the wrong ways.

Let's start with the fact that this is a Christmas movie. The setting is during the holiday season, the characters are all stylishly dressed in winter coats, snow falls from the sky like confetti, and wreaths and trees are decorated all around: This is a Christmas movie. The very last line of dialogue is "Merry Christmas, Alfred. Goodwill to men...and women." So tell me why the bulk of the plot is about the Penguin trying to win the Mayoral election?!

I know, I know: The script itself hangs the lampshade on this, noting that "elections happen in November; this is late-December" and the whole election process in the film is centered around the Mayor being recalled, forcing a new election to be held. I get it. It's plausible but a stretch. Still, I get it. The thing is, this is a story. Someone conceived this idea. Someone put pen to paper to make this, and they did it in the most convoluted way possible. Wouldn't it have been easier to just set the story in September or October, or even June (the movie was released in the Summer after all), and build up to a November election like normal? Why go through the extra steps that add nothing to the plot? Why have an election movie during Christmas (again, in a Summer blockbuster)? The reason is because Burton wanted Christmas. The fact that the screenwriter, Daniel Waters, wanted a Penguin/Mayor plot was irrelevant. They didn't really make the two ideas work, they just...stuck them together.

None of that even begins to get into the backstory of the Penguin, being that he's a deformed monster that looks like a penguin, is abandoned by his parents, and is adopted, coincidentally (is it a coincidence?), by penguns, before bringing in a circus troupe of psychopathic killers to do his dirty work...and also, somehow, procure a few thousand ballistic missiles that can be strapped onto the backs of those penguins.

THIS MOVIE IS BONKERS, PEOPLE

Help me understand this: Is Penguin raised by penguins because he is some sort of penguin/man hybrid? What I mean is, was there some intrinsic connection between he and them, or is it just dumb luck that there are penguins living in the sewer underneath Gotham, who happen upon a baby that resembles a penguin/man hybrid and decide to raise him as one of their own without any idea what exactly he is? Is Penguin Penguin because he was raised by penguins, or because he looks like a penguin? It can't be both; that coincidence is lightyears away from credulity.

And then there's Catwoman. Selina Kyle is pushed off a high-rise, falling dozens of stories before landing on the snowy ground. Yes, she was slowed by falling through several cloth canopies overhanging the entrance below (at least I think that's what they were; I've never seen so many of those things stacked on top of each other), but the impact still should have turned her insides into mush. After she's dead, a dozen or so stray cats surround her and, with what I can only assume is "cat magic," revive her, turning her from nerdy secretary to sexy bombshell....oh and she dresses in all leather and parades around town with a whip, lighting department stores on fire. She "dies" a few other times in the movie, including taking several rounds to the gut at point-blank range but, as she says, she has nine lives, so it's fine.

The thing is...how'd she survive the first death? The cats brought her back but she wasn't "Catwoman" until after that. Once she becomes Catwoman then I'm willing to indulge in the cat magic idea and say that her various falls and gunshot wounds are recoverable, but the 200ft drop onto the cold ground should have been it for her before it began. Selina herself calls the fall (really a pushing) from the high-rise her first death, which raises the question: Is Catwoman Catwoman because she was resurrected by cats, or was she already Catwoman, and possessed nine lives before she realized her power? It can't be both; that coincidence is lightyears away from credulity.

And let's not leave out Batman. Unlike in the first movie which presents Wayne as an eccentric billionaire who throws lavish parties and allows reporters to wander through the halls of his manor without supervision, this movie presents Wayne as a veritable recluse, who rarely leaves his house and spends his days sitting in a chair, moping, until the Batsignal is turned on. When it is, a half-dozen other spotlights, each adorning the Bat logo, shine brightly inside his living room, alerting him to danger. Doesn't it also alert literally anyone else in the house to the fact that he's Batman? Is that why he stopped throwing parties, because he installed a new Bat signal system?

All of that raises the question: Is Batman Batman because he dresses like a Bat or was he already...okay nevermind, that one doesn't really work.

The list of weird, nonsensical, and bizarrely odd things to be found in this movie is as long as the film itself. I didn't even get into Max Shreck who, from the name, to the hairstyle, to the acting choices made by the inimitable Christopher Walken, is beyond captivating to watch on screen, while making no sense at all as to his plans or motivations. I can follow his actions as they happen, but whenever I stop and try to determine his big-picture agenda, I'm stumped. I'm left to conclude he's not really a master planner, but is just winging it.

Off-topic, but at one point the Penguin crashes a costume party for Gotham's uppity elite in his underwear while riding a giant rubber ducky. I love this movie. I don't understand what anyone was really trying to accomplish with it, but I love it. I watch it every Christmas season because, at the end of the day, setting aside all the macabre Burtonisms (which I also love, as everything the man touched from 1985-1999 is basically perfect), the movie is about three misfit people, cast aside by the world around them, coming together around the holidays to argue about politics, break out into fisticuffs, and embarrass each other while standing around in their underwear.

It's not much of a Batman movie, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but it sounds like the perfect Christmas movie to me.