James Batman (1966)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

James Batman,starred by the late actor Dolphy,who is considered in the Philippines as its "King of Comedy", is a Filipino spoof movie that makes fun or better yet insults the iconic roles of Adam West and Sean Connery as Batman and James Bond respectively. The story is quite simple.There is a dangerous organization called CLAW organization that threatens the destroy the world in 5 days. The world organization that is similar to the United Nations, calls upon the help of two people who has extreme dislike for each other, to help stop this from happening. These two people are James Hika,a spoof character of James Bond, and James Batman,a spoof character of Batman. They try to show their dislike for one another until they finally needed work together in order to fulfill their mission.The two superheroes are performed by Dolphy in a dual role. He makes fun of James Bond as well as Batman. Although he does alright in his comedic performance in making fun of these characters, it is evident that it is a low budgeted film back in the 60's as we can see production set ups for what they are. We also get to see a cliched and formulaic film.The characterizations are thin. And we know how the film is going to end up. We see that these type of spoof movies works in the Philippines as Dolphy has done several of them in his 50+ year career. But nevertheless, this film is more of an insult to the iconic roles of Adam West,who was Batman in the 60's TV series, and Sean Connery,who performed James Bond in several movies during the 60's.

The plot of this movie is simply: A UN-like meeting is interrupted by the leader of a communist organization that threatens to destroy the free world in five days if the countries does not join him. The UN then calls in James (a version of James Bond) and Batman & Robin. They work separately to get to the bottom of this evil organization, and is joined by others during the way.This is, in fact, a watchable movie. It's not just "so bad it's good" (which it is, too), but it works alright as a low budget 60s action movie. The action scenes and the plots are not much worse than what you would find in 60s TV-shows, like Batman, Bonanza, etc.. The sets and locations are good enough, especially one of the villain's weapons: a huge metallic hand shooting death rays. The cinematography is at times quite interesting. Partly because they are inspired by the Batman TV-show, but other times it seems like they just went for unusual perspectives and blocking. Maybe it's unintentional, or for practical reasons - either way it's something to notice as you are watching it.I'm not saying it's a good movie though, because it is not. The plot is weak, the characters thin, the humor often juvenile (lots of fun is had with James being bit in the butt by a centipede), and some scenes goes on for way too long. But still: it's entirely watchable. And it's the kind of movie that would fit perfectly for riffing (funny comments), like Rifftrax or MST3K.