659. Batman & Robin (1997)

Starring: George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Uma Thurman

Director: Joel Schumacher

Running Time: 126 mins

Batman & Robin is an American film about the epic battle between Batman & Robin and the evil Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy, who plan to freeze Gotham City, however Poison Ivy’s appeal threatens to break up the caped crusader and the boy wonder’s relationship.

Well, if you like your superhero movies campy and filled with terrible puns, then this is the film for you! However, no-one likes that. I’ve never been a fan of the modern, more serious superhero films (The Dark Knight is an exception), I prefer a little bit more comic book fun, but this goes way too far in the opposite direction.

I’ll leave the fact that the performances are terrible and this doesn’t actually have a story for a bit later, and start with the incessant amount of puns and cheesy one-liners. This film should be called ‘Carry On Batman & Robin’, due to the nature of the comedy that they try to inject into it.

I don’t mind too much cheesiness in a relatively campy film, but when you get jokes that interrupt the atmosphere, and fall flat on their face at almost every other minute, it makes for a very jumpy and jerky watch, ultimately ruining any interest you may have had in any aspect of the film.

And one aspect you won’t have any interest in is the story, because there isn’t one. Ok, Mr. Freeze tries to freeze Gotham, and Batman & Robin have to stop him, but there’s no real development in terms of the characters or the plot itself, it’s just a series of explosions before a totally predictable ending.

However, the most outstandingly and surprisingly terrible thing about this film is the performances. With a stunningly all-star cast including George Clooney, Uma Thurman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Chris O’Donnell and Alicia SIlverstone, you’d expect some real quality, but the majority of them are horrible.

I actually thought that George Clooney was a relatively convincing Batman (more so than Christian Bale), but the rest of the cast was terrible. Chris O’Donnell was like a whiny little boy, Arnold Schwarzenegger only spoke in one-liners and ‘freeze/cold’ puns and Alicia Silverstone’s character had no character.

But the worst one by a mile was Uma Thurman. A great actress in my book, but the performance she gave here was torrid. It seemed as if she was making Poison Ivy into some sort of 1940s femme fatale, but it turned out to be a laughably bad characteristic.

Overall, then, this gets a 5.2, because while I didn’t mind the campiness of it all, its terrible story, or a lack thereof, puns, performances all made up for a laughably appalling film.