![]() Roads zigzag across each other miles above the ground, giant statues seemingly adorn every building, and the ground level appears to be overrun by metrosexual biker gangs. The characters-well, more like caricatures-are equally ridiculous, from George Clooney’s Batman-the third actor to take on the role in the same franchise and same continuity-to Uma Thurman’s “Mae West but somehow more provocative” take on Poison Ivy to a version of Bane that’s basically Frankenstein’s monster in a luchador mask, and the Gotham City they all inhabit feels more like a funhouse than an actual city. ![]() Freeze freezing a dinosaur skeleton and shouting “What killed the dinosaurs? The Ice Age!” to Batman and Robin midair surfing on doors broken off of a space capsule to somehow survive a thirty thousand foot drop in about a five-minute timespan. The film feels like a constant game of escalation, continually topping itself in terms of sheer audacity and ridiculousness: we go from Robin crashing through a museum door on his motorcycle and leaving behind a perfect silhouette of the Robin symbol to Mr. When you get to about a quarter of the way into the film to see Uma Thurman performing a burlesque dance while sensually removing a gorilla costume, then about five minutes later find Batman and Robin in the middle of a bidding war for her affections capped off by Batman pulling out a themed credit card from his utility belt and quipping “never leave the cave without it,” you realize that we haven’t just jumped the shark, we’ve jumped the exploding shark that Adam West barely escaped in the ’60s with the help of his trusty Shark Repellent Bat-Spray-seriously, ’60s Batman is a genuine masterpiece, and if you haven’t already watched it you’re doing yourself a disservice. Batman & Robin is that same formula being twisted into full-blown insanity. And finally, it’s a film that in 2022 is a bizarrely refreshing antidote to modern superhero films, as the genre feels increasingly weighed down by the need to try and establish itself as more serious fare.īatman Forever found Joel Schumacher blending the campy tone of ’60s Batman with the gothic grandeur of ’80s Batman, drenching the whole thing in neon and letting Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey loose to see who could chew the most scenery. It’s an utterly ridiculous film that wears its ridiculousness like a badge of honor. It’s a film one of our own writers called “ one of the worst, perhaps the worst, blockbuster of the ’90s.” It’s a film that Joel Schumacher has flat-out apologized for making.īut, it’s also a film that dares to not only say that there might be something a little absurd about a rich guy who spends his nights dressing up as a bat to fight criminals, but that the absurdity is something that should be fully embraced and celebrated. It’s the film that topped Empire’s reader-voted list of “ 50 Worst Films Ever Made“. Yes, by virtually every metric Batman & Robin is an awful film. Mind you, I was doubled over with laughter pretty much the whole time, but there was hardly a moment where I wasn’t thoroughly entertained. ![]() ![]() So when I first took the plunge and saw Batman & Robin somewhere in the ballpark of five years ago, I was prepared for the worst.Īnd… I honestly loved every minute of it. But it was one that I inevitably heard about, usually in a way that almost felt like I was hearing about an urban legend: a film of almost mythical levels of awfulness, one that made a superhero whose name practically meant “cool” into a laughingstock and turned a fairly successful film franchise into the Hollywood equivalent of radioactive waste. īeing all of about four years old in the summer of 1997, Batman & Robin was a film I wouldn’t see for myself until much later on in life. Also released that summer was perhaps one of the most infamous films ever made: Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin. Not only were these films smash hits in financial terms, but they were also well-crafted pieces of cinema that in most cases are still enjoyed to this day. Not only was it the year of Men In Black, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, and Air Force One, it was also the mainstream peak of arguably the wildest career any actor has ever had, as Nicolas Cage would gift us with both Con Air and Face/Off. If ever there was a year that could be called the year of the summer blockbuster, it would almost certainly have to be 1997.
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