Batman and Robin (1997)

Armed with high technology and bad one-liners, Batman and Robin, with their new comrade in tights and vigilantism Batgirl, must stop super-powered psychos-in-love, Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze, from bringing about a new Ice Age and repopulating the world with mutant plants.

I have a theory about long-running television series. Late in their run, they become more surreal and self-satirizing. Examples of this include "Seinfeld," "Newsradio," and even the still-chugging classic "The Simpsons." I'm starting to think that this same theory may hold true, more or less, for some movie series. This seems to be the case with the last two installments of the Superman series, The Bride of Chucky, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, and, finally, with our current subject. Unfortunately, here, as with the lamentable Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, a high dosage of camp has been forcibly injected into the proceedings.

Yes, for some reason the Powers To Be made a million-dollar homage to Adam West's Batman, only with rubber nipples and phallic symbols. The only problem is that I don't think anyone involved in this production ever actually watched an episode (despite an out-of-place reference to Aunt Harriet, of all things, in Batgirl's dialogue) . If they did they'd understand that part of the main appeal of the old 60's show, besides the unashamed, self-conscious camp, was in its low-budget charm. Without the hokey costumes and the economic set design, a good chunk of what made it fun is gone. You can try, but you really can't capture the same spirit with an over-the-top budget, top-of-the-line special effects, and stars with eight-digit paychecks (a lesson also learned by the modern film version of Flash Gordon)

Even sadder is the fact that the 60s "Batman" actually had better dialogue than this monstosity. Sure, it was corny, but at least it was rarely nauseating. The dialogue in Batman and Robin is nearly 95% bad one-liners, repeated exposition (I lost count of the times characters explained ad nauseum certain plot points and how many times Poison Ivy had to explain her powers), and quips, even outside the action sequences. Here's just a few of many, many painful examples that almost put the "romantic" exchange in Batman Forever to shame:

You noticed the dialogue attributed to Mr. Freeze. You may have noticed both of his lines play horrible puns off of Mr. Freeze's frigid nature (even I could do it). Now, image Arnold Schwarzenegger delivering these lines with complete flatness, a black hole of humor that sucks up any infinitesimal amount of amusement one may have gotten from his lines. Painful, isn't it? Now, imagine this going on through out most of the movie. It's enough to turn the Pope into an atheist.

Ah, and now we have Mr. Clooney as the Batman himself. Clooney knows damn well the only reason he's there is that the studio needed a pretty face to replace Kilmer's, and Michael Keaton wasn't returning any of Schumacher's calls. I've seen O Brother Where Art Thou?, so I know Clooney-despite his reputation as a hook thrown out by the studios to capture chicks-is capable of acting well. This means that there's no excuse for why Clooney sleepwalks through the movie, except that he actually read the script and knew it was pretty much a lost cause.

The two annoying sidekicks Robin and Batgirl don't do much to prop him up either. At least, though, Chris O'Donnell seems to be having fun here, although honestly his character's so damn annoying you'll just want him to experience a similar fate he suffered in Fried Green Tomatoes. Alicia Silverstone, even though her character and presence in the film is pretty much an afterthought, botches the job badly, although it's probably the film's fault for trying to convince us, among other things, that Alicia Siverstone can be a bad-ass biker chick by night. Right.

And what of Uma? I don't know whose idea it was (but I'm looking right at you Schumacher), but Uma Thurman put entirely too much misplaced effort into making Poison Ivy the living sum of every cinematic femme fatale that ever lived. She talks like Bette Davis (and doesn't do too good a job of it), has some of the mannerisms of Mae West, and, hell, they even threw in a little Marlene Dietrich in for good measure. In fact, there's a scene where Ivy comes seductively out of a gorilla costume that was lifted entirely from Dietrich's Morocco. Rather than coming across as the living embodiement of a classic archetype, though, Thurman's Poison Ivy is just embarrasingly goofy and uninteresting, which is a shame since if Thurman took it to a more subtle level, it might have been somewhat fun at least, but subtlety is something in short supply in a Schumacher film (or most major Hollywood products, for that matter). I suppose it's actually a good thing that Ivy is all too quickly dispathced by an indignant Batgirl in a rather embarrassing scene where Batgirl chastises Ivy for degrading women with her seductive ways; a funny thing coming from Alicia Silverstone in tights.

There's also the subplot about Alfred dying, but that's only used to bring Batgirl into play (yes, fanboys, here Batgirl isn't Commissioner Gordon's daughter, but Alfred's "niece"), to enforce the film's "moral" about the nature of family, and bring in some half-assed scenes where Clooney, O'Donnell, and Silverstone all get to be "sentimental" and so forth. This is a shame, since Micahel Gough as Alfred is probably pulling in the best performance by far here, and rather than making the classic Alfredian witticisms we all know and love, he's giving overly sappy monologues (and somehow creating A.I. versions of himself overnight). It's a waste, and an embarrasment to the series' one mainstay.

In the end, what you just have is an overbloated blockbuster that may have been at least a cheesy cult classic had it attempted to actually be enjoyable in any way and a whimpering end to a film series that started out with a bang. Still, Batman and Robin has its uses. There's always the infamous "how many homoerotic undertones can you see" drinking game which spans from Batman's nipples to Mr. Freeze's phallic escape rocket. Just don't play a game where you take a shot for every bad one-liner or cheesy pun, or else you'll be dead from alcohol poisoning well before the film's halfway point.