Ugh... Batman and Robin. There's so much to talk about with this piece of garbage I find it hard to pick a place to start. I knew once I started this retrospective I eventually would have to come to this movie. And much like a seventy car pile-up on the freeway, you know it will hurt, you know you should steer clear and take alternate routes, but something just compels you to witness the carnage for yourself.
Batman Forever, for as bad as it was, acutally made a lot of money. Mostly from fans that felt betrayed by what they saw, but who cares? They paid to go see it. ONCE! Trust me, I've yet to find anyone that went to see it twice in theaters. Well, with success comes more money and Joel Schumacher is back for Batman and Robin. I doubt it's any secret I don't think very highly of Joel Schumacher's work. But it is just so hard to pinpoint the moment this movie went off the rails. Because everything about it is just so wrong.
I think I'll start with the cast. For this romp Val Kilmer was replaced with George Clooney. Then for our villians we have Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze and Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy. Chris O'Donnell is back as Robin and as Batgirl we have Elicia Silverstone. Please remember this was 1997. We didn't know any better.
Elicia Silverstone made herself famous by appearing in several Aerosmith music videos. And really that's about the range of her acting talent. When she isn't allowed to speak. As long as she is on screen looking pretty, she's a flawless actress. Ms. Silverstone just came off a bewildering hit movie Clueless where she plays a brain dead California valley girl. How well do you think she did in this one?
I'm sure most of you know Uma Thurman from the wonderful Terantino movies like Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. Unfortunately, Terantino wasn't making this movie. Uma Thurman also made a good living doing comedy movies like The Truth About Cats and Dogs but also did a number of great dramatic movies like Gattica and of course Pulp Fiction. If Shumacher and company can make Uma Thurman look like a rank amateur, what does that tell you?
Arnold Schwarzenegger is the king of camp. I'm hard pressed to think of any movie he's ever done other than the Terminator movies and Predator that weren't jam packed with campy action and bad dialogue. The fact he was cast in this movie doesn't surprise me, but I am a little disappointed. Of course then I remember he did Junior and I'm back to not surprised.
But the biggest disappointment has to come from the horrific disappointment that is George Clooney. I guess to be fair it was early in his movie career. He hadn't done Oh Brother Where Art Thou or Ocean's Eleven yet. He was getting jobs based on his looks alone. No matter what excuse you want, I still say he's the Timothy Dalton of the Batman movies.
I've said this in other reviews before but it takes a special kind of screw up if a single word or phrase can irrevocably destroy your movie. Within the first ten minutes of the movie, I counted at least five such instances. I'll share with you the first two lines of dialogue. I'll let you decide at what point that remote in your hand starts changing the channel on its own. Robin: I want a car. Chicks dig the car. Batman: This is why Superman works alone.
From there the dialogue only gets worse. Mr. Freeze makes nothing but ice puns. Poison Ivy either speaks in sexual innuendos or plant puns. Robin is constantly whining about how Batman is the hero and he's the sidekick. Batman of course shows no human emotion at any time. My brain hurts just trying to remember how bad it was. It's like when something horribly tramatic happens to you. Time slows down and then your brain supresses the memory as best as it can. But little things leak in and you might not remember all the details but you're still in the fetal position crying.
And then there's the bat puns. They are nothing new of course. Since the 1960s and even in the comics there were bat puns. For example the 'batarang' instead of a bomerang or the 'batmobile' instead of an automobile. We let stuff like that slide mostly because they are really cool. But then they introduced us to the 'bat credit card'. Not even the Adam West tv show would ever have thought of that. I think it's the perfect symbol of this whole movie. Batman doing something he would never do, using something he wouldn't ever use, and speaking in commerical tag lines.
Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl was a huge embarrassment. The character was re-written so Barbara Gordon was no longer the daughter of Police Commissioner Gordon, but instead the niece of Bruce Wayne's long-time butler/confidant/surrogate father Alfred. It's such an embarrassment I'm just going to refer to her as Barbara Pennyworth just to distinguish her from the actual Batgirl. In the movie she is Barbara Wilson but that's just lazy. Alicia was supposed to be from England and of course doesn't even attempt to speak in a British accent. She sounds like she flew in from Clueless.
I've put off bringing this up because I really don't want to discuss a person's sexuality. For me, I have no problem with a person being either gay or straight or anything in-between. And I really find sexual humor to be in poor taste. Mostly because I see it as just being mean. With all that being said, based on the design of the batsuit, I'm wondering if the writers wanted Batman and Robin to be lovers. The 'bat nipples' aside, the suits they wore looked like something right out of a naked greek statue. Everything was form fit and accentuated every muscle. They looked like they were naked and wearing nothing but a cod piece. And of course the cod piece draws the eyes to their crotch because the color contrast makes it stick out just that much further. Pun definately not intended. And Shumacher just seemed to find enough reason to get as many close-ups on random butts and crotch shots that I feel I would be actively omitting something if I didn't say it. It didn't help that Saturday Night Live at the time were running clips of a cartoon called the "Ambiguously Gay Duo". Even the Batman and Robin logo looked gay. It was the Robin symbol sitting right on top of the Batman symbol.
Everything about this movie was just bad. I could go on forever talking about it but I wouldn't be adding anything new that hasn't been said before. This movie was so bad it was nominated for eleven Razzie Awards and Alicia Silverstone won for worst supporting actress.
Here are my final words on Batman and Robin. And I will quote the brilliant actor George Takei: You are made of stupid!
The film did so poorly that plans for the next Batman sequel Batman Triumphant were cancelled. It would be until 2005 with Batman Begins that the series would be rebooted. And that is what we will take a look at in part 6.
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