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• Such a disaster — for Batman & Robin
  Written by cosmobrown on 06.06.2009

  Back in 2001, Akiva Goldsman won an Oscar for his A Beautiful Mind screenplay. Now, the right, fair and just thing to do would have been to smelt down that little golden man and use it to reinburse anyone who had to pay to sit through Batman & Robin, for it truly is that awful. The decline of the Batman series started with Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever, with it's camp and silly tone and overabundance of villains, but at least it was enjoyable and there were moments to admire from that film. Batman & Robin has nothing. This is where the franchise literally hit rock bottom, not to see the light of day for 8 years, when Christopher Nolan dusted it off with the excellent Batman Begins. The film starts off poorly and never recovers from there. Too many awful, awful puns and one-liners ("now i know why Superman works alone"), and a generally smug, self-parodic and smarmy tone make this fourth Batman instalment hard to connect to or indeed to even like. Nothing from this film feels connected to reality, even in a comic book-style sense. There's too much going on; too many subplots, too many characters vying for attention, that the film never has a core focus. The tone is camp and ridiculous, which makes taking the events in this film seriously an impossibilty, and no one comes out of this with any dignity (minus poor Michael Gough as Alfred, only one of 2 actors who have been in all 4 films). George Clooney just looks bored and embarassed as this series' third different Bruce Wayne/ Batman, while Alicia Silverstone is embarrasingly miscast as a former Oxbridge student (!) who races motorcycles on the side. As the villains of the piece (if you don't count Schumacher himself), Arnold Schwarzenegger is clearly having a great time as Mr Freeze but that doesn't mean he's any good. It probably would have helped if his entire dialogue didn't exist solely of bad ice-related puns ("Lets kick some ice!"). Uma Thurman looks hot as heck as Poison Ivy, but again she's so unrestrained and over the top that you can't accept her threat as credible. I must also make a point at how misused Bane is in this film. In the excellent Knightfall comic series, Bane broke Batman physically, mentally and emotionally like no other villain had been able to do, and to see him reduced to a mindless rent-a-thug in this film is just sad. But yes, I think i've ranted enough. Anyone whose seen Batman & Robin knows what a joke it is. Every decision made by the creative team is woefully so far off the mark, from the script to the costumes to visual style. Thank goodness that the Batman franchise is in safe hands now with Christopher Nolan.