Rating:  -
Batman and Robin. The single worst comic book movie I have seen in my life. The movie that, at the time, killed the Batman movie franchise. The movie that, symbolically speaking, took Batman's dignity, threw it on the hot asphalt, and ran over it ten thousand times with a dump truck that was filled with machine parts. And the movie that finally showed us what we had been dying to see for years; the outline of George Clooney's butt. This movie is regarded as a travesty by almost all Batman fans. Personally, I don't hate it. I know it sucks, but I don't hate it. To me, this movie is so bad, so unbelievably awful, that it is actually good. It's so stupid, that it's funny.
First, I'm going to talk about the few positive things I have to say about this movie. Or rather, the one positive thing. George Clooney. Now don't get me wrong, I agree with the statement that he is the worst Batman of all time. He was doing his best Adam West impersonation here. In fact, someone once told me that Clooney admitted that he played Batman as being gay. If that's true, then he certainly did a good job of it. Is this actually supposed to be the same character from three films ago? He's got a completely different personality. He's a different character. He's not dark and brooding any more, he's spouting lines like "That's not very PC. What about "Bat-Person" or "Bat-Woman"?". But as bad as Clooney's Batman was, I thought he did make a pretty good Bruce Wayne. In my view, it is just as important to play a good Bruce Wayne as it is to play a good Batman. Michael Keaton played a pretty good Batman, but a horrible Bruce Wayne. Val Kilmer made an almost passable Batman, but he didn't even play Bruce Wayne. He just did his Batman growl through the whole movie. George Clooney made a bad Batman, but a very good Bruce Wayne. So in my view, he gave almost as good of a performance as Keaton. Keaton and Clooney both were able to portray one part of one aspect of the character Batman very well. Clooney is probably the closest they got in this series to portraying Bruce Wayne well. Christian Bale is the first one to play a good Batman and a good Bruce Wayne, so he is better rounded than all of the previous actors. But that's a different review.
Other than Clooney's Bruce Wayne, there weren't many performances that were done very well. Chris O'Donnel returns as Robin, and man is he annoying this time around. He was a whiny jerk in the previous movie, and he's about three times as annoying as he was in "Forever". At first, he whines about how Batman doesn't trust him, and that as his partner, he should respect Robin's judgment. This starts after Robin is hit by Mr. Freeze's freeze gun. The thing is, Batman himself had almost been killed five minutes earlier, when he got trapped in Freeze's ship rocket thing. I always thought that was kind of weird. Anyway, a wedge starts to get driven between Batman and Robin. Then Poison Ivy appears on the scene. She manages to put Batman and Robin under her love spell thing, and they both fall in love with her. Batman, possessing greater strength of will than Robin, manages to break out of Ivy's spell. He deduces that Ivy is trying to kill both of them. At this point, Robin's character becomes a complete moron and thinks Bruce just wants Ivy for himself. It was a good idea to have Batman and Robin acting hostile toward each other, and then have to overcome their differences in order to defeat the bad guys. The problem is, it was handled very poorly. In the previous movie, I felt some sympathy for Robin, having just lost his family. He was struggling to accept their loss, and he was kind of funny and cocky. His character was at least somewhat enjoyable. In this, he's acting like Anakin Skywalker, whining and crying like a fifteen-year-old. Except that Robin does straighten out in the end, unlike Anakin. Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl is barely worth mentioning, because she has a very small and almost inconsequential role. She's just so wooden and uninteresting. And they really mess up her story. She's supposed to be Jim Gordon's daughter, not Alfred's niece. And what was up with that motorcycle racing subplot? Seemed kind of pointless. Her entire character didn't really add anything to the movie.
Uma Thurman plays poison Ivy, and for the role she was playing, I thought she did okay. She was supposed to be over-the-top and campy, and she does that pretty well. Some of the lines she had were genuinely funny, instead of just being stupid like Mr. Freeze's puns. She doesn't really come across as evil, which could be bad or good depending on your point of view. Obviously, they were trying to create another kid-friendly Batman movie. So they wanted her to be more like she would have been if they had put Poison Ivy on the 60s show. Uma Thurman is a decent actress, and she was just playing the role she was given. The performance that was by far the worst was that of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He went way beyond the camp of the old TV show. First of all, his suit looks ridiculous. It's too big and flashy, and it deviated way too much from what it looked like inn the comics. Unlike Uma, who was just playing the role she was given, Arnold actually gave a bad performance. Not only were his stupid ice-related puns ("You're not sending me to the cooler", or "Can you be cold Batman?") reminiscent of something a fifth-grader would have written, but his delivery just seemed so off. It was like he was trying to kill the movie. Not that it needed his help for that. I know I'm just treading ground that many people have touched on before, but it wouldn't be a Batman and Robin review without a Mr. Freeze critique.
Along those lines, I won't really go into the codpiece and nipple stuff, because I just don't really feel the need. What can I possibly say about those atrocities that a million other people haven't already covered? I'll just say this: those kinds of things belong is a parody movie, like "Meet the Spartans" or "Epic Movie". Some people have tried to tell me that this is what they were trying to do with the movie, that the thing was actually intended as a parody of the past Batman movies. I would buy into this, except for that subplot with Alfred almost dying. I was somewhat insulted that they actually tried to tug at my heartstrings in a movie where Batman pulls out a Bat-credit-card and says "Never leave the cave without it". They were not trying to make this a comedy, they wanted to make it a serious movie. And even if they had been trying to make a comedy, this is a sequel to two very dark movies and one semi-dark movie. But whether they intended it or not, this is definitely a comedy. It's an unintentional comedy, but a comedy nonetheless. This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life, but I don't hate it. In fact, I enjoy watching it. It is simply so stupid, that it is actually funny.
Rating: -
Now that waterboard torture has been banned a proposal that this film should be used as a replacement has been whispered in the dark halls of the Pentagon. Highly classified reports, exposed at great risk by agents of TCSSAASSG (The Canadien Super Secret Agent And Skateboard Society Guys), tell of sickingly sinister experiments where foreign extremists are repeatedly shown this film using the Clockwork Orange Ludovico Treatment eyelids clamped open method. Even the most hardened are completely broken down blathering idiots after an average of 5.34 hours continous exposure. After several days of quiet recuperation just the mention of another "Treatment" is enough to pry the deepest secrets from the previously unreachable buried vault in their conniving brains. Reports also tell of those exposed waking up from nightmares incoherently crying and screaming of visions of closeups of rubber clad crotches, butts and nipples.
Rating:  -
I hate how many people say this movie sucks because to be honest all you critics and all you batman fans out there Batman and Robin had the most action, special effects and actors than any other batman movie in the franchise. I did like the dark knight and batman begins but I did not like the Tim Burton movies because they were too dark and over the top. Batman and Robin was action from start to finish. Another good thing about this movie is the fact that it has my all time favorite actor in it. Arnold Schwarzenegger. His role was a little cheesy but it was hilarious and made me laugh throughout the whole movie. I like Uma Thurman, she was very hott in this movie because I liked her in Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. Bane was amazing, they did a great job and stayed true to the comics. Joel Schumaucher is the greatest director next to James Cameron. Adam West is a waste of time and talent. I dont care what people say , just because his Batman is the original doesnt make it better than this one. People say Batman Forever is better but Batman and Robin was a huge improvement. So suit the batfans up alfred. Its an amazing, wild ride making it the best batman in cinema history.
Sincerely ,
Frank J Narudcci
Rating:  -
I don't know what I hate the most: this whole absurdity excuse for a film or the fact that Batman and Robin ran around Gotham City with nipples in their suites. This is by far the worse film ever, and reason to be besides almost destroying the franchise it had a repulsive script that even made young ones upset.
I cannot understand what was going through Joel Schumacher's mind when he was filming this debacle. There are so many things that you can point out from the film that you can even write a book about it and sell it under the joke section. I know he apologized years later for it but it still there's no reason to flip everything around from Tim Burton's first two dark knight movies to this junk. If it wasn't for Christopher Nolan the Bat would have probably never be seen again.
I don't think I can watch this movie over even if they paid me to.
Rating: -
The dynamic duo are back but this time they are up against the nefarious Mr. Freeze, who is bent on turning the world into an iceberg, and the slyly seductive but highly toxic Poison Ivy, who wants to eliminate all animal life and turn the Earth into a gigantic greenhouse. And Batman's butler Alfred is dying for a mysterious disease that Freeze's wife has. It's up to Batman, Robin the Boy Wonder and the new heroin Batgirl Alfred's niece to fight all three villains and save Alfred before he dies! But unfortunately Mr. Freeze holds the key to save his life. Great, light entertainment. A fun movie recommended to all.
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