Review of Batman & Robin (1997) by Halfwelshman — 19 Feb 2012

I can occasionally appreciate Joel Schumacher as a director - Tigerland was a good character-driven war drama, Phonebooth a decent thriller, even Batman Forever had a quirky, flamboyant charm about it.

Batman & Robin, on the other hand, is a pretty shoddy film. The "franchise killer" as it's been dubbed, is a whole new level of campiness and bad acting, with a dire joke-laden script and cartoonish action and sound effects.

I can understand Schumacher wanting to cheer the Batman franchise up a bit after Tim Burton's Goth-tastic tenure, but this film goes above and beyond adding a lighter touch to proceedings, often bordering on parody.

George Clooney, playing the new Bruce Wayne/Batman, has a permanent expression of pained embarrassment on his face, Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mr Freeze is comical (mostly due to the abundance of ice-based quips he's forced to spout) and Uma Thurman's performance as Poison Ivy is so bad and lacking in emotion that she looks like she's reading cue cards.

Chris O'Donnell is just about pasaible reprising his role as Dick Grayson/Robin, and newcomer Alicia Silverstone makes no impact at all as Barbara Wilson/Batgirl. The only cast member who gives any performance of note is the ever-brilliant Michael Gough, reprising for the fourth time his role of Alfred, Bruce Wayne's wise and loyal butler, though the emotional impact of Alfred being at death's door is somewhat ruined by the fact that Gough has to share the majority of his screen-time with Clooney.

The film's set pieces are largely unremarkable, excepting the quite gripping bike chase between Dick, Barbara and a gang of street thugs, and the film's visually impressive finale where Mr Freeze quite literally puts Gotham city "on ice".

Batman & Robin isn't a superhero film, it's a joke. It's so over-the-top and unintentionally funny, in fact, that for all of its faults (and there are many), you can get a perverse kind of pleasure out of watching it.

There are films that are so bad they're good. This isn't one of them, but it is nearly at the stage where it's so bad it's acceptable, at least as a comedy film. I can screenings of Batman & Robin being held in the not too distant future where people really indulge in its awfulness.

Can you imagine a room full of people wearing their bat-nipples and quoting Arnie's terrible puns in time with the film? I can, and surprisingly enough, that doesn't scare me - in fact it sounds quite fun.

Not bad for a film that claims to be a superhero movie, but in fact resembles something between an extravagant toy commercial and one of the lesser Carry On films.