Bat-ology: A Review of "Batman & Robin"

I'll bet this scene went on for another hour featuring a full-length hockey match between Batman and Robin against
Freeze and his goons, but was cut for time because the idea of Batman and Robin sporting hockey blades and playing
hockey seems absolutely asinine.

It's time for the main attraction. The king of the terrible, the worst of the worst, the monumental pile of eco-unfriendly garbage to ever grace the silver screen. In fact, I'm getting wretched feelings in my stomach just thinking about it. Batman Forever was a financial success release in 1995, and naturally, a sequel was greenlit which would once again feature Kilmer's Batman tangling with overly flamboyant and aggressively laughable villains that seem to spring up out of the Garden of Eden. What do I mean by that? I have no idea. During the late '95/early '96 production window, Val Kilmer committed to a movie called The Saint, which he publicly decreed that he was more interested in performing in that movie than a Batman Forever sequel, so he was dismissed from the fourth film and returning director Joel Schumacher recast the role of Batman. Stepping into the cape and cowl for the fourth film in the series was E.R. womanizer George Clooney, who by now had just been in From Dusk 'Til Dawn and was quickly ascending to the point he would leave E.R. and start his blockbuster career. Clooney has even gone on record in stating he thought signing on to be Batman in the fourth Batman film was going to be a very good career move and was hopeful.

"George, your lines are written on here so you don't have
to memorize them."
"Thank you..."

...but trust me when I say this that the fourth film, which we all know became the universally despised Batman & Robin not only exists as one of the worst comic book movies ever made, the single worst Batman movie ever made... but also one of the worst MOVIES ever made. The art direction is Batman Forever cranked to eleven, the acting is so over-the-top it's like a high school musical cast completely with football stars and cheerleaders, neither party ever having seen a Thespian workshop, its dialogue is so hokey it makes third graders grasp their heads in anguish, it's action scenes are more callbacks to the Batman TV series of the late 1960s with Adam West and Burt Ward, its story pacing is all over the place, its tone is pretty much a gay bar on speed; it's just dumb, dumb, dumb. So how did we go from the brooding Gotham City of gothic architecture in Batman to this neon-nightclub Long Island Iced Tea Gotham City of Batman & Robin? Let's... *ugh* *heave*... sorry, almost threw up again. This is Batman & Robin, a move that teaches us kids will by into anything, movie's don't have to be good to be released, and nobody involved even has to try anymore....

Two years after defeating Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones) and the Riddler (Jim Carrey), Batman (George Clooney) and his new partner, Robin (Chris O'Donnell), come into conflict in the form of a new foe, Mr. Freeze (Arnold "I'm Firing My Agent" Schwarzenegger), who has left a string of diamond robberies in his wake. Arnold seems so out of place in this movie. It doesn't even feel like you're watching Mr. Freeze... it just feels like you're watching Arnold do a bad cosplay of Mr. Freeze, and his ice puns? Jesus butt-humpin' Christ, his ice puns. There's so many ice puns in this movie. "Freeze well", "What killed the dinosaurs? The ice age!" "In this universe, there's only one absolute; everything freezes", "Can you be cold, Batman?" "Cool party", "Allow me to break the ice", "Stay cool, bird boy", "Tonight's forecast, a freeze is coming"... and those are just from memory. Get used to this nine-year-old flag football game halftime show, we're going to be here for a while.

Schwarzenegger poses with the payment he got for
doing the movie.

During a confrontation in the natural history museum, Mr. Freeze steals a bigger diamond and flees, freezing Robin and leaving Batman unable to pursue him. Later, Batman and Robin learn that Mr. Freeze was originally Dr. Victor Fries, a doctor working to develop a cure for MacGregor's syndrome to heal his terminally ill wife, Nora. After a lab accident, however, Fries was rendered unable to live at normal temperatures and forced to wear a cryogenic suit powered by diamonds in order to survive. At a Wayne Enterprises lab in Brazil, botanist Dr. Pamela Isley (Uma Thurman) is working under the deranged Dr. Jason Woodrue (John Glover... FUN FACT: The voice of the Riddler in Batman: The Animated Series), experimenting with a drug named Venom. She witnesses Woodrue use the formula to turn the violent, but diminutive, convicted serial murderer Antonio Diego (some guy) into a hulking monstrosity, who he dubs "Bane" (Professional wrestler Robert "Jeep" Swenson). Yeah, remember when Bane was a luchador prison survivor from South America who ventured to Gotham City and saw Batman as the ultimate prize to break to prove his dominance in the world, hence we got the award-winning comic series Knightfall? Or in 2012 when we got a Bane that was a global terrorist hellbent on showing Gotham it's reckoning through the detonation of a nuclear device and wiping Gotham from the face of the Earth as a salute to Ra's al Ghul? Yeah, don't expect this Bane to be anything like any of that that. This Bane is just a mindless freak of nature with near-Godlike strength but the Venom chemical renders him completely barbaric with lower-than-average I.Q.

"Reinforced steel... not good!"
God. You can practically hear this picture.

When Isley threatens to expose Woodrue's experiments, he attempts to kill her by overturning a shelf of various toxins. Despite Woodrue's efforts, Isley is resurrected, transforming into the beautiful and seductive Poison Ivy... somehow... before exacting revenge; she kills Woodrue with her poisonous kiss, and sets fire to the lab, leaving it to burn down while she escapes with Bane. She finds that Wayne Enterprises funded Woodrue, though they cut Woodrue's funding when he intended to weaponize the Venom drug, thus she appropriates Bane as a muscle-bound thug, taking him with her to Gotham City. Meanwhile, Alfred Pennyworth (Michael "Why am I still here?" Gough)'s niece, Barbara Wilson (Alicia Silverstone), makes a surprise visit and is invited by Bruce Wayne to stay at Wayne Manor until she goes back to school. So yeah... a ton is happening in this movie, I hope you're paying attention.

Wayne Enterprises presents a new telescope for Gotham Observatory at a press conference interrupted by Isley. She proposes a project that could help the environment, but Bruce declines her offer, which would kill millions of people... how that wasn't a fucking red flag right there is beyond me. Wayne is just like "Yeah, people are gonna die if we do this" and calmly hands the proposal back to her. Also, remember when Batman would shy away from the spotlight, stick to the shadows, strike from darkness and remain inconspicuous with his city? Well that night, a charity event is held by Wayne Enterprises with special guests, Batman and Robin, and Poison Ivy decides to use her abilities to seduce them. This results in Batman and Robin bidding on her with literally millions of dollars, all covered by Batman's... ugh... Bat credit card. A literal MasterCard with a Bat logo on it, something he says he "never leaves the cave without". *Wretch* *heave*... gosh, one of these days I'm gonna puke. Anywho, the weird homo-hetero bidding session gets interrupted when Mr. Freeze crashes the party and steals a diamond from the event. Although he is captured by Batman and detained in Arkham Asylum, he eventually escapes with the help of Poison Ivy, who killed two security guards with her kiss in the process. Meanwhile, Dick discovers that Barbara has participated in drag races to raise money for Alfred, who is dying of MacGregor's syndrome. The motorcycle chase stops the movie dead in its tracks, and is that fucking Coolio of all people I see there? I have zero idea why he's here... but apparently after perusing the internet, I found out he's supposed to be playing Jonathan Crane, the man who would one day become the Scarecrow, another Batman villain. Now, I'm all cool with that... but Jonathan Crane is supposed to be a SCIENTIST who experiments with dreams and hallucinogens, NOT AN ILLEGAL STREET BIKE RACING BOOKIE. WHAT THE HELL KIND OF SHIT IS THAT?!

Robin practicing for his post-crime fighting career:
Lead singer in a screamo band.

Batman and Robin begin to have relationship problems... which I get sounds a lot more, well... uh... you know what, let's just call it "bromance problems"... yeah that works. So Batman and Robin begin to have bromance problems because of Ivy's seductive ability with Robin, but Bruce eventually convinces Dick to trust him. Poison Ivy is then able to contact Robin once more; she kisses him but fails to kill him due to Robin wearing rubber lips. Robin says that the rubber lips are immune to her charms, some kind of an attempt at a James Bond line, I think. Meanwhile, Barbara discovers the Batcave, where an AI version of Alfred (Shockingly advanced for what I think is supposed to be the late 1990s) reveals he has made Barbara her own suit. Barbara dons the suit and becomes Batgirl. I'm glad Batgirl is present, but I mean that is just a dumbass clumsy way to shoehorn her into the story; "Oh no, you've discovered the Batcave! Well, good thing I thought you were going to so I have this suit made to fit for you. I know you've never fought crime in your life or have any forensics training, but here you go. Good fucking luck, my beautiful young niece."

Uma Thurman and her bodyguard visitng Harvey Weinstein's
apartment to kick the ever loving shit out of him.

Ivy captures Robin, but he gets rescued by Batman, and Batgirl arrives and subdues Ivy to get eaten by her throne plant, before revealing her identity to the pair. I don't know why she needed to; even a blind guy could tell it was Barbara. The trio decide to go after Mr. Freeze together. By the time they get to the observatory where Mr. Freeze and Bane are, Gotham is completely frozen. Batgirl and Robin are attacked by Bane, but they eventually defeat him by simply kicking apart his venom tubes, stopping the flow of venom to his body. Bane collapses before reverting to his original form and is left helpless on the ground. For a guy who was built up as that physically imposing and unstoppable, I'm surprised Batman and Robin earlier didn't just deduce to kick his tube out of his head. It is what it is, though. Meanwhile Batman and Mr. Freeze begin to fight each other, with Batman eventually getting the upper hand with a pun of his own "The heat is on". Batgirl and Robin manage to thaw the city, and Batman shows Freeze a shockingly well-recorded and edited video of Poison Ivy during her fight with Batgirl, who had informed the latter that she killed Mr. Freeze's wife. However, Batman informs Mr. Freeze that she is still alive, in cryogenic slumber before being moved to Arkham Asylum, waiting for Mr. Freeze to finish his research. Batman proceeds to ask Mr. Freeze for the cure Mr. Freeze has created for the first stage of MacGregor's Syndrome to administer to Alfred, and Mr. Freeze atones for his misunderstanding by giving him the medicine he had developed. Mr. Freeze is then detained in Arkham Asylum. Poison Ivy is also imprisoned in Arkham Asylum with a vengeful Mr. Freeze as her cellmate (due to his own cell is in the process of being modified for his laboratory needs) and he plans to make Poison Ivy's life miserable while staying for the attempted murder of his wife. After Alfred is cured, everyone agrees to let Barbara stay at Wayne Manor and fight crime with them, and that night... Batman, Robin and Batgirl run at the screen as the triumphant music plays.

I don't get it; are these guys crimefighters, a 90s musical
pop group or a co-ed sports team?

I can safely say I've reviewed a large number of movies so far in this blog, and not many of them leave me as dumbfounded, annoyed and bored as Batman & Robin. Sure, reviewing this was just like a couple of years ago when I reviewed Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (which if you're interested can be found here). In fact, the first four Batman movies have a parallel history to the first four Superman movies, it's freaky. In terms of behind-the-scenes production woes and overall critical response... although I'll argue that Batman Forever is at least more entertaining than Superman III. Still... Batman & Robin as well as Superman IV suffered for relatively the same reasons; production values. Joel Schumacher has gone on record stating that studio interference to make the movie more "toyetic" cost the movie its chances at being considered grounded. George Clooney, as it turns out, also can't play every role like he's up for an Oscar. His portrayal Batman was weird. He didn't even try to disguise his voice like the actors before him. He was just like "Hey Freeze, I'm Batman" without sounding remotely like Batman. Keaton gave his Batman a guttural rasp, Kilmer did a Keaton impression; Clooney was just like "Sup y'all" like being Batman was a one-night only thing on Halloween. Chris O'Donnell was already the whiny, angsty Dick Grayson who was inching more toward being Nightwing, even using the Nightwing logo colored red to stay as Robin.

"Thank God this is the last one for me."
"Hey, me too!" *High fives*

As for the villains? They're just as comical as Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey, only weirdly somehow containing more sexual overtones. Must've been the way Uma Thurman played Poison Ivy. Don't get me wrong... MAJOR hottie alert, and she actually counteracts Arnold Schwarzenegger's over the top goofiness quite well... even if she herself is a little out there. That weird inflection she gives herself when she talks is almost distracting, but not too bad. As for Bane? Bane sucks. His character was reduced from a crime boss from the Central Americas who came to Gotham City, built a criminal kingpin, broke all of Batman's villains out of Arkham to tire him out, then waltzed into Wayne Manor and beat the shit out of him when he was exhausted and broke his back over his knee is now just a pawn of a henchman for Poison Ivy. Swing and a miss on that one, movie.

On top of that, I can't really say anything else that hasn't been said already in the twenty-three years since this movie came out. Batman & Robin fails across the board. It's poorly made, visually distracting, laughable garbage. Straight up. It's only saving grace is that it's ironically entertaining, but you don't feel fulfilled after you watch it. It's dumb stupid dialogue from comically cheesy characters in a bright and colorful setting in a story that's so over-the-top it makes my skin crawl each time I watch clips from it. It's just hokey, mindless kids entertainment. A freakin' mid-afternoon popcorn fart on Cartoon Network. Uma Thurman and Alicia Silverstone are the only two that feel like they're trying, and while even that's debatable... the men are pretty lazy at it. Again, except for Schwarzenegger who's treating the script and the movie like it's his last chance at making a comedy and is pulling out all the cheese and glorious puns he can handle. Schwarzenegger's not a dumb guy; he's held the Governor's office in California and has turned down mega millions to star in shitty sequels just because "the timing wasn't right" or "the story sucked". So what was going through his brain acting this movie out? You know it's even bad when both George Clooney and Joel Schumacher had gone on record many times stating they apologize to fans all the time for this movie.

Skip this one at all costs. All costs. Unless you want to be lobotomized cinematically, for as we will read about in the next chapter of Bat-ology, it crippled the entire Batman film franchise for nearly a decade......