Batman & Robin (1997) Warner Bros./Action-Adventure RT: 125 minutes Rated PG-13 (strong stylized action and violence, some innuendo, some language) Director: Joel Schumacher Screenplay: Avika Goldsman Music: Elliot Goldenthal Cinematography: Stephen Goldblatt Release date: June 20, 1997 (US) Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Chris O’Donnell, Uma Thurman, Alicia Silverstone, Michael Gough, Pat Hingle, John Glover, Elle Macpherson, Vivica A. Fox, Vendela K. Thommessen, Elizabeth Sanders, Jeep Swenson, Joe Sabatino, Michael Paul Chen, Kimberly Scott, Senator Patrick Leahy, Jesse Ventura, Ralf Moeller, Doug Hutchinson, Coolio, Nicky Katt. Box Office: $107.3M (US)/$238.2M (World)
Rating: ***
If Shakespeare moonlighted as a film critic, he’d probably describe Batman & Robin as “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. It’s an apt description of this mess of a movie that proves definitively that director Joel Schumacher is the real villain of this fourth and final entry in the original Batman series. He trashes Tim Burton’s dark vision and turns it into a gay Las Vegas stage show. All that’s missing is Siegfried & Roy. That’s how a friend described it as we left the half-filled advance screening the night before it opened. It’s not an entirely inaccurate statement.
I knew early on that Batman & Robin was doomed to fail. Two years earlier, people were turned away from the advance screening of Batman Forever. Seating was so tight, the area Warner rep told me to come alone, no room for a plus one. What a difference two years makes. He asked me to bring ten of my friends to Batman & Robin. I could only round up half that number. The night of the screening, he sent somebody outside to invite random customers to see it for free to little effect. It’s never a good sign when people turn down an invite for a free movie.
At the time, I went with the current of hatred directed at Batman & Robin. I thought it was a monumental bore. I couldn’t believe a movie with this much sound, color and movement could be so bad. I was particularly displeased with the terrible performance delivered by George Clooney as Batman/Bruce Wayne. He brings absolutely nothing to the role which I guess is fine since there’s been nothing to it since Burton and Michael Keaton dropped out of the series. There’s plenty else wrong with Batman & Robin. It’s misconceived at almost every level; however, this grievous bit of miscasting tops the list.
Now here’s the funny thing about Batman & Robin. I’ve often said that bad movies are like fine wine; they get better with age. It’s been nearly a quarter century since this turkey was set loose on the moviegoing public. After watching it a few times, I acquired a taste for it. I now look at it as an unintentionally funny bad movie. Clooney still sucks along with a few other things, but now I can laugh at it albeit for reasons the makers never intended.
Although he plays one of the title roles, Clooney is not the top-billed star of Batman & Robin. That would be Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator) who plays the Caped Crusader’s latest foe Mr. Freeze, a molecular biologist who undergoes a horrifying transformation when a lab accident renders him unable to live at normal temperatures. To survive, he has to wear a cryogenic suit that keeps his body temp at zero degrees. It’s powered by diamonds that Mr. Freeze and his gang obtain from a series of robberies across Gotham City.
He’s not the only villain who has it out for our heroes. Poison Ivy (Thurman, Pulp Fiction) has a score to settle as well. In her former life, she was Dr. Pamela Isley, a dedicated but flaky botanist working under a mad scientist (Glover, Scrooged) in a South American laboratory owned by Wayne Enterprises. He’s been experimenting with a drug called Venom. He uses it to turn a diminutive serial killer into a hulking monstrosity named Bane (Swenson, No Holds Barred). Understandably upset, she threatens to expose him. He responds by directly exposing her to various toxins. Instead of killing her, it turns her into a psychotic femme fatale with a deadly kiss. With Bane in tow, she comes to Gotham with a deranged plan to save all plant life on earth at the expense of all human life.
Back at Wayne Manor, Batman/Bruce Wayne is trying to work through trust issues with his young partner-in-crime-fighting Robin/Dick Grayson (O’Donnell, Scent of a Woman). Like every father (and father figure), he’s not ready to let him fly on his own yet. This, of course, causes dissension in the ranks. It gets worse when Poison Ivy enters the picture and tries to seduce both of them by way of a special toxin. Robin/Dick Grayson comes to believe Batman/Bruce Wayne is jealous that she chose him over the mentor.
She’s not the only woman disrupting things at home. Barbara Wilson (Silverstone, Clueless), the teenage niece of loyal butler Alfred (Gough, Horror of Dracula), arrives unannounced with the intention of taking her ailing uncle away from his life of servitude. He has an incurable disease called MacGregor’s syndrome, the same disease Dr. Fries (aka Mr. Freeze) was looking to cure when he had his accident. His wife has it too. He keeps her in suspended animation in a cryogenic chamber until he finds a way to cure her.
NON-SPOILER ALERT #1! Barbara, naturally curious about her hosts and surroundings, manages to locate the Batcave and joins the team as Batgirl. Even if it wasn’t in all the trailers (which it was!), everybody would still know this inevitable outcome. NON-SPOILER ALERT #2! All three villains team up to kill Batman. This is another inevitability. Don’t the villains always team up at some point? Penguin and Catwoman? Riddler and Two-Face? HELLO?! SPOILER ALERT (?) Mr. Freeze devises a special weapon to freeze all of Gotham City in an attempt to lure Batman.
Schwarzenegger gives the worst performance of his career in Batman & Robin. Yes, this includes Hercules in New York. He looks ridiculous. He sounds ridiculous too. If I never hear another bad pun about snow, ice and cold (e.g. “Let’s kick some ice!”), it’ll still be too soon. Listening to his one-liners, it dawned on me what Schumacher is trying to do. The original dark tone established by Burton is giving over to the campy one of the 60s TV series with Adam West and Burt Ward. I kept waiting for the “POW!”, “WHAM!” and “BIFF!” graphics to appear. The Beetlejuice director never would have hired Ah-nuld. Even though I like him as an action star (or hero if you prefer), he’s not a good fit here.
Thurman is positively boring as Poison Ivy. Sure, she’s beautiful and easy on the eyes, but it’s not enough to conceal her character’s lack of personality. She’s not a fraction as seductive as Catwoman. I’ll give her this though; she’s still more interesting than Bruce Wayne’s current love interest played by Elle Macpherson (Sirens). Schumacher could have cast a plastic mannequin in the role and it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference for all the effort the former supermodel puts forth which is none. I guess it’s fine since the screenplay does nothing with her character. Her only big scene is a dinner at home with Bruce where he once again uses his complicated life as a means of commitment avoidance. I’d like to believe he’s waiting for Selina Kyle to return, but she’d probably bristle at Clooney’s dull-not-dual nature.
O’Donnell comes off as a spoiled prep school boy with a reckless side as the Boy Wonder. Silverstone plays Barbara Wilson/Batgirl as if she just came home from the mall after a day of shopping and hanging out with her BFFs. When she squeals “I found the Batcave”, it sounds like she just found the perfect top at half-price. She not at all convincing as a kick-ass kind of girl. Then there’s Bane who’s just all wrong. In the comic books, he was a highly intelligent being. In Batman & Robin, he’s depicted as a big, hulking, monosyllabic idiot with a barely legible speech pattern.
There’s no two ways about it; Batman & Robin is a great big mess from its disjointed “plot” to its bombastic personality. It has a record amount of bad dialogue, most of it spoken by Schwarzenegger. To its credit and in its defense, the exterior shots of Gotham City are impressive visually speaking. The cinematography (by Stephen Goldblatt), production design (by Barbara Ling), art direction (by Richard Holland and Geoff Hubbard) and dizzying camera angles combine to make Gotham look like a wild, candy-colored, drug-induced hallucination. It’s a far cry from the German Expressionist GC of the first two movies, but it’s still pretty cool.
Although Batman & Robin tends to drag, it’s never exactly boring. At least that’s how I feel about it now. The passage of time has given me a new perspective on this colossal bomb that ended up being the lowest grossing entry in the series. It was the one that killed the franchise until Christopher Nolan rebooted it a decade later with Batman Begins. I look at Batman & Robin and see proof of the old adage stating “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”. It’s as wrong as they come, but it sure is fun to watch it flounder and flop.
As for my star rating, it’s complicated. If I’m applying normal standards, it’s a one-star movie. If I go by fun bad movie standards, it gets three stars. All I can say is watch at your risk. Your liking or disliking of it depends on how much you appreciate great bad movies.
