Even against the tough competition from THE EXORCIST, THE STING won the Best Picture Oscar for 1973. So often we talk about the Academy getting things wrong. This time they got it right.

I saw THE STING for the first time as a young teenager, when it aired on PBS during a pledge drive. Even despite the endless commercial interruptions suggesting I pledge my allowance money in exchange for Scott Joplin albums and piles of tote bags, I was mesmerized by this movie; only about twenty years old at the time, but, with its Depression setting, felt like a relic from a forgotten age.

Essentially, THE STING is a sequel. Four years earlier, stars Paul Newman and Robert Redford and director George Roy Hill had teamed for the first time in BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, an undeniably great end-of-the-western comedy. Though THE STING was well-liked and a huge box office hit, it is far more fashionable today to prefer BUTCH CASSIDY, since its quipping heroes and dark ending bear have far more in common with cool contemporary cinema than the romantic and unapologetic ally upbeat STING.

Redford plays Johnny Hooker, a low-rent grifter whose partner is killed when they accidentally steal from rackets boss Doyle Lonnegan (an intensely menacing Robert Shaw). Seeking revenge, he finds Newman's Henry Gondorff, and convinces him to help play Lonnegan for "The Big Con."

Redford's good but Newman is better, or at least gets all the best moments (His first line: "Glad to meet you kid, you're a real horse's ass"). Setting the con in motion requires Gondorff infiltrate Lonnegan's card game and out-cheat him. He spikes his breath with gin (because marks can't tell if you cut it) and plows into the high-class, high-stakes game with "Sorry I'm late. I was taking a crap." The poker scene in THE STING, stylistically simple as it is, is one of my favorites, because Newman’s mischievous grin never fails to make me smile.

THE STING was only the second film I ever reviewed in this column nearly five years ago. The writing was terrible (some may say it still is) by even my infantile prose couldn't smother my enthusiasm for the film, an enthusiasm that remains just as strong five years later. Back then, there was something unquantifiable about the film, a charm that I couldn't put my finger on. "There's something magical about this movie," I wrote, straining to understand exactly what about this middlebrow concoction involving Depression-era grifters charmed me so completely. Five years later I'm still struggling with it.

Here's one additional reason to love THE STING. A key indicator of any movie's quality is its ability to suck you into the narrative on repeat viewings, even after you already know the outcome. In this department, THE STING is almost unparalleled. No matter how many times I see it (and I'm at about a dozen full viewings at this point), there are moments that still affect me: Luther announcing his retirement to Hooker; the final hand in the poker game on the train; the final moments of “The Wire” con. That the entire film is structured around the careful manipulation of suspense and surprise makes this feat even more astonishing -- by all rights, this film shouldn't work at all on second viewing. Instead, it works better because instead of viewing the con from Lonnegan's perspective, we see it from Gondorff and Hooker's. And it's always more fun to be the con artist than to be the conned.

IF YOU LIKE THE STING, CHECK OUT: SLAP SHOT (1977), for another teaming of director George Roy Hill and star Paul Newman, as a washed-up minor league hockey player trying to get his team into shape. Cheerfully vulgar, it’s one minor cult classic worthy of its cult.

THE BAD

Like so many sequels, THE STING II tries hard but can’t erase the stigma of being a mediocre follow-up to a great movie. Not surprisingly, it flopped at the box office, barely earning ten percent of its predecessor’s box office take. THE STING II is not a complete creative bomb - there are a couple of successful elements worth mentioning - but not by any means an entertaining viewing experience.

In THE STING, Johnny Hooker’s (Robert Redford) grifting partner Luther was murdered by gangster Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw). Hooker then teamed with an old buddy of Luther’s, Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman) to sting Lonnegan and extract some revenge on behalf of his fallen friend. Now years later, Lonnegan (played in STING II by Oliver Reed) seeks revenge on the duo and their associates. He kills a minor player named Kid Colors and sets his sights on Hooker (now Mac Davis) and Gondorff (Jackie Gleason, of all people).

The cyclical nature of these stories is interesting; a murder set off the first film, which in turn sets off the murder that creates the second sting. But then, it’s not entirely clear that this truly is a sequel to the first film. Oh sure it’s called THE STING II and all the advertisements play up the characters and their history, but the script, by David S. Ward, is confusing. In THE STING, Hooker’s first name was Johnny, Gondorff’s Henry. In THE STING II they go by Jake and Fargo respectively. Kid Colors, their buddy whose murder ignites the plot of THE STING II? Not a character in the first film (there was, however, a Kid Twist). Lonnegan, is referred to as Lonnegan, and perhaps even could be assumed to be Doyle Lonnegan, but is never directly called by his first name.

Why the change? Who knows; the vagary could be a cover to explain why the characters look so different (Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman aren’t exactly physical doubles) and even act so different; with Hooker boasting a background in boxing and Gondorff showing off some impressive pool hustler skills (Naturally, since Gleason was Minnesota Fats). Coincidentally, the fact that the characters are only partially named and based on those in THE STING is ignored by all available online reviews, including one by Karl Williams that appears on The New York Times’ site that incorrectly states “Jackie Gleason fills the shoes of Paul Newman as Harry Gondorff,” but Jackie plays Fargo Gondorff and Newman played Henry Gondorff.

The script, by THE STING’s David S. Ward is shorter than the original by nearly a half hour, and the narrative suffers. When Luther is killed in THE STING we feel Hooker’s pain and share in his need for vengeance because we’ve gotten to know Luther and his family and we liked him. Kid Colors is killed only seconds after we meet him, reducing our personal stake in Gondorff and Hooker’s success. With only 100 minutes to tell the story of a complicated con game there’s little room for most of the things that make THE STING such a satisfying film. The characters are no longer complex and flawed (Hooker’s no longer a foolish risk taker and Gondorff doesn’t have a drinking problem) and there is no time for the authenticating con man details that filled the first movie, like the scene where Gondorff shows off his card handling skills. The con itself is good, and just when I figured it out, it convinced me I hadn’t, but a film is like a great meal: a story without strong subplot and character is like a good steak without mashed potatoes and vegetables. This doesn’t even address the thorny issue of Gleason and Davis trying to continue rolls originated by Newman and Redford, or the plausibility of the scrawny Davis convincingly portraying a heavyweight boxer (and a good one at that), or the period sets and costumes which are a lot less convincing than THE STING’s.

It’s easy to miss what little charm THE STING II has to offer. But it does have a very strong performance from Teri Garr (who, by the way, was sexy as hell back then) as a female con woman who joins Gondorff and Hooker. The Scott Joplin and rag-inspired music by Lalo Schifrin is still fun, and suckers for con man movies (i.e. me) will still get drawn into those aspects of the plot. If Newman, Redford, and Shaw had returned and Ward had written a few more drafts of his script it’s conceivable that THE STING II could have been pretty good. Without those contributions Universal should have headed the advice of that classic song: you gotta know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em. THE STING II is a seven two off-suit. They should have tossed it away immediately.

INSTEAD OF THE STING II, CHECK OUT: THE HUSTLER (1961), the great pool movie starring THE STING II’s Gleason and THE STING’s Newman. The two played rival pool hustlers; Newman the brash upstart and Gleason the seasoned veteran.

THE UGLY

The collective gasp heard around the country on June 20th, 1997 was the sound of millions of Batman fans getting their first glimpse of the newest incarnation of their hero. After a fire & ice credits sequence, Batman and Robin strap on their costumes before heading out to once again rid Gotham City of evil. Director Joel Schumacher pauses her to give extra special attention to...gratuitous Bat-ass and Bat-a-wang shots? What gives?

BATMAN & ROBIN (or BATMAN 7 ROBIN as my keyboard seems determined to call it) was clearly not your father's superhero movie, unless your father was a hack screenwriter with a homoerotic streak who thought shitty puns were the very heights of comic genius. The villains in this third sequel to Tim Burton's solid original (though watch it again if you haven't seen in a while; it is already aging poorly) are Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy. One might ask: what could these villains possibly have in common? One is obsessed with freezing everything, the other with covering the world with vegetation. The two goals are seemingly at odds. The leaves falling off the trees on my street suggest they would not be very good friends.

As our own Scott Timpton very accurately pointed out in his indispensable Comics 101, Mr. Freeze was a originally a minor Batman villain originally called Mr. Zero (sporting one of the all-time great fashion emergency costumes), who shot things with a freeze gun and wore giant punchbowl on his head. He really came into his own as a villain on “Batman: The Animated Series,” where he was cast a tragic figure; poisoned by the frigid chemicals he used to put his dying wife into suspended animation, he commits crimes to fund his research in the hopes of reversing his condition as well as hers. BATMAN & ROBIN's Freeze is clearly drawn from the animated version, right down to the frozen wife and goal-driven criminality. He spends hours staring at his wife's lifeless body, or shedding icy tears over their wedding video. He is consumed by remorse that turns his heart as cold as his body.

Why, then, do you suppose he spends the rest of the movie cracking god-awful cold/ice/freeze jokes at Batman? How, exactly, do lines like "THE ICEMAN COMETH!" or "FREEZE IN HELL BATMAN!" accurately reflect Freeze's inner turmoil?

In one of the grossest mischaracterizations in the history of movies Mr. Freeze, a character devastated by loss, frolics around like a Catskill comedian! Schwarzenegger, who plays Freeze, has certainly relished bad puns in the past, but never on this scale or with such frequency. Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who talked a lot of crap about this movie when he won an Oscar for A BEAUTIFUL MIND, might have been forced to write these jokes by an egomaniacal star, but he is still the only credited screenwriter. You think additional people refused credit for their writing here? I would have.

Mr. Freeze fits right in with the rest of BATMAN & ROBIN's plot, whose tone is equally unpredictable. One minute the Dynamic Duo are fighting thugs who spout Scooby Doo sound effects (i.e. Yoink! when one gets knocked over by a flying disc), the next poor old Alfred (Michael Gough) is dying of an incurable disease! Gough gives a genuinely touching performance that is utterly wasted, since all around him people are unironically shouting "COWABUNGA!" George Clooney, thanklessly forced to straight face the whole project, is a good Bruce Wayne but doesn't have much charisma beneath all that latex and rubber.

Director Joel Schumacher was going for something here, but damn if I can figure out what. In press at the time, he claimed BATMAN & ROBIN harkened back to the tone of the old 1960s television show, but campy as it was it, that show was actually clever -- it was funny because they were trying to be funny. BATMAN & ROBIN is only funny when the staggering, nonsensical, monumental unfunnyness of it all comes into full view (Like any time Schwarzenegger opens his mouth, for instance). And I can't help but notice that Schumacher’s version of Gotham City features a staggering number of giant statues of naked men. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I could go on and discuss everything else this movie gets wrong. Like how Freeze freezes everything and then Batman unfreezes it, but there never seems to be any water created. Or how Batman, Robin (whiny Chris O'Donnell), and Batgirl (a bland, charismaless Alicia Silverstone) are in a rush to stop Freeze's evil scheme, but have time to change into specially-designed costumes that have been sitting around for just such an occasion. Or the wire-work stunts that looked bad back in 1997 and looks even worse now. This movie is a cornucopia of comic crap.

Yet the immense and near-total bombness of the venture lends it a charm akin to watching Jon Stewart on “Crossfire” or Ashlee Simpson on “Saturday Night Live” - it's so purely awful on nearly every level in a way that few films are ever allowed to be. With so many gatekeepers, studio executives, test screenings, most of the eccentric material in the mainstream gets weeded out well-before we ever see it. BATMAN & ROBIN feels like its comprised solely of these eternally discarded parts.

So be prepared for a similar gasp on June 17th, 2005, almost exactly eight years later. Dark Knight fans will be back in the theater, for Christopher Nolan's BATMAN BEGINS. They might be gasping out of excitement. Or they might be gasping cause they've just seen Bat-crotch again.

IF YOU LIKED BATMAN & ROBIN, CHECK OUT: BATMAN (1966), the big-screen version of the Adam West television show, chock full of high camp fun. The scene where Batman and Robin decipher the Riddler’s clues (“What type of people are always in a hurry?” “Rushing people... Russians”) is perhaps too funny for its own good.