Review: Batman And Robin, Pun And Suffering
- Aug 3, 2017
- 2 min read
Following the success of Tim Burton’s successful 1989 Batman film, Warner Bros pushed out several films before George Clooney, Uma Thurman and Arnold Schwarzenegger brought a swift end to the franchise. Batman And Robin is often regarded as one of the worst films ever made, but is it really that bad?
Batman (George Clooney) and Robin (Chris O’Donnel) have been kicking about Gotham, taking out whatever villains come there way. But when a new group of superpowered psychos step onto the scene, Mr Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman) and the hulking Bane (Jeep Swenson). And so a showdown for the fate of Gotham, and indeed the worlds, begins.
I for one, do not hate Batman And Robin, in fact, I quite enjoy it. While I won’t deny that it’s an awful, awful movie, one with terrible effects, acting, writing and everything else, I’ll quite happily watch Schwarzenegger spout an insane number of puns (seriously, it’s just about every line) and Uma Thurman’s first scene is maybe the strangest thing I’ve ever seen as she babbles about breeding plants with snakes. No, you didn’t read that wrong. By God this is a weird movie, truly it is the definition of the word bizarre, and I cannot help but adore every second of it.
While it feels more like an elongated cartoon than an actual film. There’s a shoddy plotline about Alfred having the same disease as Mr Freeze’s wife, and Batgirl shows up for...reasons but between bat nipples, bat buttplates and bat credit cards (never leave home without it), it’s clear that the film is not to be taken seriously. And seriously is not how I take it.
Aside from featuring a quintessential Schwarzenegger role, Mr Freeze is a national treasure, it’s a movie so unabashedly terrible that it’s a hell of a lot of fun. Wholly embracing its stranger side (Freeze spends a scene conducting his henchmen in a musical number), it features some pretty great/awful moments and for that reason alone I feel I can recommend it.
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