Batman & Robin (1997)
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Batman & Robin Movie Review
Batman & Robin is a 1997 superhero film directed by Joel Schumacher and starring George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Uma Thurman. It’s such an entertaining movie.
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“No matter what anyone tells you, Bane,
it really is the size of your gun that counts“
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I do not hate this movie nearly as much as many others do. In fact, I find it not much worse than ‘Batman Forever’ and I certainly don’t think it should be that horribly reviewed when it’s this fun. Yes, this movie is ridiculously entertaining in all the bad ways, but still I was entertained and that counts.
What Joel Schumacher made here is a gay campy classic of bad cinema as the homoerotic overtones are both hilarious and instantly memorable, especially the bat nipples. The cartoony, over-the-top dialogue is horrendous, but also very funny. And his direction ruined the acting for sure as these otherwise solid actors were undone by terrible directing of their performances.
In this highly campy movie there are simply way too many characters and literally every one of them is campy, silly and stupid. But I did like seeing all of these classic characters and villains no matter what. George Clooney’s performance is so weak and he simply could not sell the more emotional sequences with Alfred, but he does look great, that’s for sure.
Robin is as stupid as ever and the relationship between the two is again recycled from the last movie and it felt boring here. Mr. Freeze is probably the campiest character of the bunch which says a lot, and Arnold’s performance here is his worst which also says so much as he’s always mediocre, but here he outdid himself, bolstered by laughably bad lines of dialogue.
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Poison Ivy is such a great character, but here she was reduced to a lot of camp and sex appeal with Uma Thurman delivering the best performance of the cast, but that again doesn’t say much. As for Alicia Silverstone’s Batgirl, the less said about her the better as her performance is so bad and ‘Clueless’ remains her only good work.
Batman & Robin is technically pretty solid in fact. I did like the production design of the film and the effects, everything looked fine besides the horribly silly and camp, but fun costumes. The runtime is overlong, but the movie was still very entertaining to me with its silly action and dialogue.
Not only is the dialogue laughably bad, but the performances are also mostly terrible in Batman & Robin and that’s all thanks to Joel Schumacher’s simply horrible direction. This is one of the campiest and silliest blockbusters ever made, but that also made it ridiculously entertaining for me as I’ve had a blast listening to progressively sillier lines of dialogue being spoken by its stupid characters all dressed in campy, over-the-top costumes.