I'm with you on BATMAN FOREVER.  The way I see it, we have 3 modern Batman series.  Batman/Returns, Forever/B&R, and Begins/Knight. 

The first two are these great, fantasy-land movies.  Hugely art-deco in their design, and really a cool look at what was probably once the gleaming city of the future and has since been given over to crime and poverty.  A nice update to the Batman legacy.

Forever switched things up a bit, and brought us an updated version of the campy comics from the 50's and 60's.  Everything takes place in this whacky Crayola-Gotham, where there don't seem to be any real consequences other than getting more colorful.  This and Batman and Robin are the movie versions of those comics where there's a T-Rex and a giant penny in the Batcave.

Begins brought us back to reality.  It takes place in the world that we live in, mostly in the time that we live in, and does its best to convince us that Batman is a story that could happen to you or me.  There are some fantastical elements, but for the most part it's as if Batman popped up one day in a current American city.  Like, say, Chicago.

BATMAN FOREVER gets a lot of shit for being too kiddy and silly, but that's what Batman was to most people until the 80's anyway.  I'll take FOREVER over BEGINS any day of the week.

- Branco