The first two Batman movies, directed by the moody Tim Burton, were Gothic riffs on alienation and trauma — the film equivalents of manic depression. The subsequent entries, helmed by the flamboyant Joel Schumacher, are just manic. With 1995’s Batman Forever, Schumacher chucked Burton’s operatic gloom and gave the series a make-over. Never models of narrative clarity even in Burton’s hands, the Batman films have become proudly nonsensical — awash in neon and campy dialogue, like some nightmarish disco remix of the ’60s Batman TV show.
Batman and Robin, the fourth in the series, is slightly better than the third — and I mean slightly, by millimeters. The large-scale pop apocalypse goosed a few laughs out of me. But this franchise has gotten aggressively unsatisfying. Why build expensive sets if we barely get a glimpse of them? Why stage big action set pieces if we can’t see what’s going on? Why is the editing so jumpy, the compositions so garish and cluttered, that we don’t know where to look or what we’re looking at? Why?
Joel Schumacher makes a Batman movie by throwing a batch of new characters into the stew and stirring it vigorously, leaving the poor actors to fight for elbow room. The film is almost over before Alicia Silverstone climbs into her Batgirl costume; even then, she doesn’t do much except trade a few kicks with the guest vixen, Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman), who likewise does little except blow aphrodisiacs at hapless men. Pouting and vamping in a blank postmodern way, Thurman seems dazed by the sets; Fox Force Five might have been better than this.
Among Ivy’s boy-toys are Batman (George Clooney now) and Robin (still Chris O’Donnell), who squabble over her when they’re not fighting big, bald, blue Arnold Schwarzenegger. As Mr. Freeze, who wants to cover Gotham City with ice, Arnie comes through with a rousing comic performance; he relaxes and has a great time, especially when he forces his shivering minions to sing the “Snow Miser” theme. And he has the movie’s one genuinely fine moment, when Mr. Freeze makes a tiny ice sculpture of his ailing wife and sadly watches it revolve. But even Arnie is defrosted by 6,000 lame one-liners (“Let’s kick some ice”).
Clooney, a genial regular-guy actor, makes a plausible Batman and a better Bruce Wayne than Val Kilmer. As for O’Donnell … well, he tries hard. I still think Winona Ryder or Fairuza Balk would have made a great, funky Girl Wonder, as in Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel. As it is, there are so many babes here (Uma, Alicia, the dispensable Elle Macpherson and Vivica A. Fox) that the studio seems to be nervously refuting the old Batman-and-Robin-are-gay theory. If so, why all the fabulous latex nipples and codpieces?
Batman and Robin is such sheer overkill that it’s tempting to give up in disgust and let it have its way with you. Joel Schumacher has single-handedly turned this series into empty eye-candy for ten-year-olds who demand one sugary stimulant after another; if Burton’s films were manic-depressive, Schumacher’s suffer from attention-deficit disorder. I fully expect the next Batman film to drop the heroes altogether and just be a montage of expensive guest villains chewing the neon scenery. Come to think of it, that’s what this one is.
Rob's Movie Vault 