Batman & Robin

I have a feeling that when I announced that I was revisiting all the Batman and Superman films in advance of the new film, people were waiting anxiously for me to get to this one. And why not? There is a certain joy in seeing a film critic rip into a bad movie. And let me tell you, this certainly is a bad movie. Hell, it isn't even a movie really. Rather, it's a $130 million dollar two hour toy commerical named Batman & Robin. Let's dig in, shall we?

Batman (played by George Clooney) and Robin (played by Chris O'Donnell) find themselves having to contend with Mr. Freeze (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), who has been terrorizing Gotham stealing diamonds to fuel his freeze gun and the specially designed suit he wears to keep him cool (yeah, it didn't make much sense to me either). Meanwhile, in the Amazon jungle, Dr. Pamela Isley (played by Uma Thurman) is working on combining animal and plant DNA to create plants that are more defensive to man, I guess. Her work would have made more progress but her pesky boss (played by John Glover) keeps stealing her samples. Turns out he's using it to create a super soldier serum that she witnesses him test out on some poor sap, which quickly transforms him into a muscly rage monster referred to as Bane (played by Jeep Swenson). When said boss discovers she knows about his research, he quickly kills her by throwing her around the lab, dumping a bunch of her venom samples on top of her and watches as the earth below the broken floorboards inexplicably swallows her unconscious body. Some time later, she reemerges with bright red hair, a poison kiss and the ability to give off a powerful pheromone. She names herself Poison Ivy and heads off to Gotham City to confront Bruce Wayne, and Wayne Enterprises for their environmental impacts. Soon enough, her path crosses with Mr. Freeze and the two team up to take out Batman and Robin together. 

That's more or less the plot of this film. It is such a jumbled mess of a film as it tries to pack in subplot after subplot, with character motivations changing on a whim as the plot, or lack thereof, dictates. In addition to the above, we also have Alfred (played by Michael Gough) falling ill and his niece Barbara (played by Alicia Silverstone) hanging out as well. She eventually becomes Batgirl (raising the ire of anyone who read a Batman comic book, where Batgirl was actually Commissioner Gordon's daughter, Barbara, not Alfred's heretofore unmentioned niece). It also turns out Alfred has the same condition that afflict's Mr. Freeze's wife, who Mr. Freeze is working to find a cure, keeping said wife in suspended animation until he does, and once cured a less advanced stage of. Gee, will Batman convince Mr. Freeze to have a change of heart and save his poor beloved butler? Of course. Just as Batman and Robin will no doubt fall under the charms of Poison Ivy and find themselves fighting over her with one another. There's another plot point of Bruce Wayne refurbishing the city's Obervatory with a large telescope that looks rather a lot like Mr. Freeze's freeze ray. Gee, I wonder where the climax will take place. The whole movie is woefully predictable. The script is cobbled together from various plot points from the previous two films. Mr. Freeze is an even less tolerable version of The Penguin, spouting off cheesy one liners left and right (although, full disclosure, I did legitimately laugh when he froze a minion trying to talk to him while he was watching home movies and then quipping, "I hate it when people talk during the movie.") Likewise, Poison Ivy's origin is a cheap knock-off of Catwoman's from Batman Returns. Only, instead of having John Glover, one of the few actors I know of that can go over the top and still be quite entertaining, for the entire movie he is instead quickly killed off. Joel Schumacher and his creative team certainly created a visually interesting rendition of Gotham City, but they should have focused more on the story than the visuals. Of course the whole movie is designed with toys in mind. All the vehicles, the sets, the costumes. They even have Batman, Robin and Batgirl switch into new costumes for the climax for the sole purpose of that can now become a whole new set of action figures for the kiddies to beg Mommy and Daddy for. 

The acting is resoundly terrible all around. George Clooney is basically playing Clooney. There's no real sense of the Bruce Wayne we know left, probably because it didn't exist in the script to begin with. This is no longer a man keeping to the shadows. Nope, now he's making public appearances at bachelorette auctions for charity, betting on beauties with a Bat Credit Card ("Never leave the cave without it," he quips as I groan loudly. Yes, Batman has a Bat Credit Card. You read that correctly.). Remember my review for Batman Forever, when I admitted to my innocent little crush on Chris O'Donnell? Well, this movie damn near fucking killed it. Dick Grayson is a migraine headache of a character in this film and O'Donnell isn't able to soften it at all for much of the run time, constantly whining about how Bruce doesn't trust him and how he wants a car of his own (because "Chicks dig the car," he says as I groan again. I did a lot of groaning watching this movie.). Alicia Silverstone is similarly terrible as Barbara, who arrives at Wayne Manor under the pretense of being on break from school. Actually, she was expelled because, surprise, British Boarding Schools frown on pupils engaging in motorcycle street races apparently. Beyond that tidbit of characterization, she really has no identity in the movie, aside from whining about how she wants to take Alfred away from his life of servitude, despite the fact that Alfred was basically a guardian to Bruce when his parents died and is pretty much family. It's not worth getting worked up though as it is a plot point that is quickly dropped. Then we have the villains, led by a woefully mis-cast Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was paid a reported $25 million dollars to play Mr. Freeze, spouting off one bad one-liner after another but otherwise offering little to the film. Equally terrible is Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy, doing everything but literally chewing the scenery. It's never boring, but it is so over the top and campy, it makes the 60's tv series look almost restrained.     

Overall, Batman and Robin is a trainwreck of a movie. It takes all the worst qualities of the previous film and makes them even worse. The cheesiness and campiness is right in the forefront, with bad performances from everyone in the cast. The entire movie is shamelessly designed to sell toys, which is something director Joel Schumacher actually confirmed when he apologized for the film. But, on the upside it has given us nineteen years of self-deprecating jokes from George Clooney about the movie (who seriously reconsidered what he wanted his film career to be after making it), so we have that going for us, which is great.