There is a strange phenomenon going on today called the Post Entertainment Era. This affliction of the movie industry has many symptoms (one of which is those little "TM" thingies in the title), but the one that most applies to this review is the triumph of style over substance.
Batman and Robin has more statues of naked men in it then it does interesting lines of dialogue! That should tell you one thing about this movie's quality.
The plot (what little they're is of it) is a strange and odious amalgam of sub plots, none of which is interesting in the least. Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is stealing diamonds to power a machine that can keep his wife alive. She is suffering from a decease that is now afflicting Alfred the Butler. Halfway through the movie Alfred's niece Barbara (Alicia Silverstone) comes by and occupies her time drag racing until she becomes Batgirl. She does nothing for the plot, but at least when she's Batgirl she looks good in black rubber.
As for the ambiguously gay dynamic duo, they have
both fallen for Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) environmentalist gone loopy. Batman (George
Cloony) and Robin (Chris O'Donnle) spend most of the movie arguing with each other over
who Ivy really loves. About halfway through the movie I wanted them both to just kill each
other and end my misery.
Such is this plot, stretched to an excruciating 2 hours of pure, mind numbing pain. Its the kind of Ed Woodian crap that would send even those who like Armageddon screaming out of the room.
And for all the beef I gave Armageddon I now declare that Frankenstein monster of a script genius next to this sniveling corpse that writer Akiva Goldsman has unleashed on us. Not once in the entire script did Goldsman consider his characters as real people. Instead, almost every line in the entire movie uses a pun or play on words as the object of a sentence. Never have I seen so many puns about plants or ice in one place. Where did this guy learn to write? Did Warner Brothers even bother to read this script? Since this movie exists the answer to both those questions must be 'no'.
It gets worse. Instead of thinking of themselves as real people
villains call themselves villains, heros call themselves heros and never once do I believe
these people. Ya know why? Simple, a bad script is bad enough, but when you put it in the
hands of bad actors true magic is born.
As Batman, George Cloony acts like Mel Gibson with a hangover. Good God, Val Kilmer wasn't a good Batman ether but at least he tried his best to impersonate Michael Keaton (the only man who has played this part well in history). I don't believe this guy is a hero, and since his performance is so one note I don't believe this guy is a real person ether. The cheesy dialogue he's forced to recite doesn't help much.
Chris O'Donnell whines his way through the movie and gets so annoying that I just want to throw him in front of a moving train and laugh, laugh, laugh.
Alicia Silverstone walks through her part like a
zombie on tranquilizers. Perhaps aliens removed brain her brain and replaced by a hamster
running on a hamster wheel. She's even more annoying then O'Donnell.
Dé Ah-nold however is a different story. As Freeze Dé Ah-nold does the one thing he should never do while acting: display emotions. Think about it. We all love the Terminator movies but most people hate True Lies and Last Action Hero. Why? Because dear friends Ah-nold is a bad actor. A bad actor who got lucky, but still a bad actor.
There have been lots of articles written about Uma Thurman and how Poison Ivy could have been played well if only the script wasn't such a pile of crap. You should all ignore those comments. As Ivy she's about as wooden as and oak tree. Dialogue comes out of her mouth with all the grace of a falling brick. The fact that almost every line she has has to do with some pun about plants is the most annoying thing in the entire movie. The way she plays her role I got the feeling she had studied Catwoman's part from Batman Returns a wee bit too much.
And that's another thing. This script is so derivative it plays almost like a "the best of" movie for the entire bat-series. Scenes, lines, and whole sequences are lifted from previous bat movies, thus showing Goldsman's total lack of writing skill.
And who approved that script? Who approved the
actors, supervise the camera work, and approved the production design and directed the
actors to sleepwalk through their roles? Why none other then Joel Schumacher. Schumacher
has taken a series that not only pleased crowds but also made money and turned it into the
largest pile of cinematic shit that has yet to be farted out of Hollywood's butt. If he
ever gets near a camera or a Batman movie again I want him shot on sight. And the
guy at Warner Brothers who though it was a good idea to hand over this franchise to a man
who made such crap as The Incredible Shrinking Woman should be taken out too.
If the last movie in this series, Batman Forever, was a major blunder, this movie just might be the smoking gun that killed the series completely. It certainly has for me. If your one of those people who wants to know what a truly bad movie is then this just might be it. If your a fan of the Batman series then heed this warning: Batman And Robin is more Batman the TV show then Batman the comic book. That this movie should share a name with Batman the first movie is the biggest insult I have yet to see.
RATING(OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)
