Batman & Robin
 DJ Hufford  rates it:    Community rates it:
   165 of 319 readers found this review helpful.

Well Val Kilmer realized his horrid mistake in being apart of Batman Forever and gave up the reigns to George Clooney. Now Clooney actually isn’t a bad choice by any means. He is a fairly decent actor, and he does come off as rich and aloof, which are the characteristics of Batman’s alter-ego Bruce Wayne. This film also brought back Chris O’Donnell as Robin, despite his complete lack of being able to fill the role.

Just like in Forever, Schumacher feels the only way he can make this movie is to throw massive amounts of celebrities at it. We now have Schwarzenegger playing Mr. Freeze, Uma Thurman playing Poison Ivy, and Alicia Silverstone playing Batgirl.

The plot is actually about ten times deeper then in Forever. Mr. Freeze is a villain whose wife is dying of a horrible disease. His motivation for crime is to help save her. Uma Thurman plays Ivy, a plant lover who wears poison on her lips. She is accompanied by the henchmen Bane. I felt Bane was an odd choice because he was rather obscure in the comic books. His biggest claim to fame is that he once broke Batman’s spinal cord. But other then that event, he’s pretty non-existent in the mythology. Of course for reasons only supervillians will understand, they all decided to team up and take down the Batman.

Now in Batman’s world, things have kind of gone to hell in a hand basket. He’s questioning himself for taking on a sidekick. His friend and butler Alfred is dying of some rare disease. And Alfred’s niece shows up and decides she wants to play Bats too, and she dresses up as batgirl. Add to this drama that both Batman and Robin have mistakenly fallen in love with Poison Ivy, and you get the most convoluted story in years.

Now this movie isn’t much better then Forever, but it is better nonetheless. What saved it was the acting. Clooney is hands down better at this role then Kilmer. And Arnold and Uma make far more interesting villains then Jones and Carrey. But this film still suffered from the same aspects that made Forever so bad. It was way over the top visually. It was filled with lots of bright neon colors and really took the campiness to a whole new level. The dialogue was atrocious. And there always seemed to be so many things going on at one time that you practically need to master multitasking just to watch it. If I had one wish for this movie it would be that they focused it more and excluded a lot of the fluff.

Yes, there isn’t much reason to watch this one. Go straight from Returns to Begins. Forgot that Forever and &Robin ever existed. Thankfully, this movie did so horrible at the box office that they killed the next one in line – Batman Triumphant. One could only imagine how bad that would have been. I wonder which Saved by the Bell cast member they would have used as Batman. Nevertheless, it is what it is. It’s a 100 million dollar movie that’s worth about five bucks.

Added:  Monday, April 23, 2007
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