Retrospective: Batman & Robin (1997)

BATMAN AND ROBIN (1997)

A Film Review
Copyright Dragan Antulov 2003

Development of technology always represented something like 
double-edged sword for Hollywood. Some inventions - like sound, 
colour and CGI - brought huge increases of profit to movie industry, 
while others - like television, VCR, satellite dishes, DIVX, DVD - 
brought those profits down. The latest modern invention to hurt 
Hollywood is a cell phone, at least according to business analysts 
who try to explain unexpectedly bad results of Hollywood 
blockbusters this summer. They claim that the huge audience drop-
off between the first and second day of showing is the result of young 
viewers sending text messages to their friends while watching the 
film in theatres and telling how bad the film is. If SMS hypothesis is 
true, it wouldn't be the first occurrence of Hollywood being hit by 
technologically-enhanced word of mouth. In 1997 Warner executives 
complained about "Internet geeks engaging in massive smearing 
campaign" against one of their movie. The movie in question was 
BATMAN AND ROBIN, directed by Joel Schumacher.

These days BATMAN AND ROBIN is known as the title that 
managed to kill modern-day BATMAN movies franchise.  Poor 
commercial results, even poorer reviews and open animosity of the 
original fan base - all that conspired to make the fourth instalment in 
the series the last. Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman must have been 
subconsciously aware of the franchise's bad prospects so he used this 
last opportunity to put as many subplots and characters as possible 
into a single movie. So, in this film the franchise's titular
protagonist, 
millionaire and part-time crime fighter Bruce Wayne a.k.a. Batman 
(played by George Clooney) is going to face more problems than 
usual. First one is the widening rift with his sidekick Dick Grayson 
a.k.a. Robin the Boy Wonder (Chris O'Donnell). Second is the 
apparently terminal illness of their beloved butler Alfred (played by 
Michael Gough). Third is appearance of Alfred's niece Barbara 
Wilson (played by Alicia Silverstone) who wants to become Batgirl - 
addition to Batman-Robin team. However, all those problems are 
secondary to those created by two new supervillains. First is Dr. 
Victor Fries (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger), scientist who went 
insane and became Mr. Freeze, evil genius determined to turn whole 
world to ice and the second is Pamela Isley (played by Uma 
Thurman), biologist who became Poison Ivy, evil seductress 
determined to protect world's flora at the expense of world's fauna, 
including Gotham City humans.

In 1990s audience could witness the steady decrease of quality in 
Hollywood movies. This was due to studio executives seeing that in 
this modern world hype and successful marketing was more 
important than quality of products. Joel Schumacher, director of this 
film, was unfortunate enough to embrace this sad truth with religious 
fervour and, consequently, pay even less attention to film's quality 
than usual. As a result, BATMAN AND ROBIN was bad even 
beyond the tolerance levels of complacent moviegoer masses. Its 
well-deserved reputation of one of 1990s worst Hollywood movies 
not only killed one very successful Hollywood movie franchise, but 
also damaged subsequent careers of almost every major player 
involved in project (except George Clooney and Akiva Goldsman). 

Merely naming everything that is wrong with BATMAN AND 
ROBIN would require encyclopaedic volumes of text. The most 
obvious flaws stem from Joel Schumacher raising "style over 
substance" principles of Hollywood filmmaking to pathological 
levels. Sometimes it can work and lead to campy "guilty pleasures", 
and sometimes not, like here, where "style" in question reflects rather 
questionable aesthetic criteria. The most valuable parts of the film (in

terms of money spent) are production design which gives new 
meaning to the phrase  "architectural nightmare" and costumes that 
give bad name to all fetishists. (Un)fortunately, audience have little 
time to ponder on those details, because Schumacher, in desperate 
attempt to stuff as much of material into two hours of running time, 
treats movie as an endless series of action scenes with plenty of 
explosions, movement and zero coherence or sense. 

Even if Akiva Goldsman's script had some semblance of quality 
(which, in this case, it did not), it would have mattered very little in

the end. Characters are under-developed, acting is atrocious, 
dialogue is lame and two of movies' supposedly charismatic villains 
- Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy - look like caricatures under tones of bad 
make-up. Things look even worse for BATMAN AND ROBIN when 
the movie is compared with its predecessors, including Schumacher's 
own BATMAN FOREVER. Fans of the original comic book and 1960s 
TV series would have even more reasons for complaint, but to name 
only fraction of them would make this review longer than the quality 
and importance of this film deserves.

In the end, the author of this review must say that he was once 
criticised by his friend for decision to watch BATMAN AND ROBIN. 
My friend - comic book fan who had refused to watch this film on 
principle - claimed that even the tiny sum paid for movie ticket 
would serve as justification for Hollywood to continue producing 
celluloid excrement. If only I and many other people had accepted 
such reasoning.

RATING: 1/10 (--)

Review written on August 26th 2003
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax
http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in
Croatian

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X-RT-RatingText: 1/10