Batmand and Robin be de filmic equivalent of explosive garden vegetable diarrhea. Exciting, sometime pretty to look at, but it still crap. Dis movie be Joel Schumacher’s master piece (of shit). Terruble on almost every level.
Movie begin wit Schumacher’s patented codpiece and rubber ass shots. It den seque into one of de worst aktion sekwences in Batman franchize history wit Batman and Robin skating around wit a bad guy hockey team, stick handling a diamond like a puck. And it downhill from dere.
Arnold Schwarzenneger play role of brilliant Mr. Freeze wit all de depth and nuance of, well, Arnold Schwarzenegger desperately trying to akt. He spend de entire movie trowing out lame quippy lines like: “You’re not taking me to de cooler” and “Stay cool”.
Meanwhile, in a sekwence dat look like a kid’s funhouse come to life, some crazy scientist inject a weakling wit a serum dat transform him into a Mexican pro-wrestler = Bane. He become muscle (and occasional chauffeur) to mousey scientist assistant who mutated by lab chemikals into..de sexy (???) Poison Ivy!
Back at Wayne manor, all sorts of not interesting tings happening. Alfred supposedly dying of (coinsidentally!) de same disease dat Mrs. Freeze suffer from. Alfred’s niece, Barbara arrive from London (where she apparently forget her English accent) and move in. Robin, meanwhile, spend de entire movie whining about how he second fiddle to Batman but, meanwhile, have no problem living at his place rent free, eating his food and riding his motorcycle. Batman/Bruce Wayne, on de other hand, a big dud in dis movie. Again. George Clooney play de role like he got someting else he’d rather be doing.
Anyhoo, Bruce Wayne hold another charity event. And, of course, dat mean some villain HAS to crash it. In dis case, it Poison Ivy and Bane who infiltrate de party dressed as apes. No. Really. Den, Mr. Freeze crash de party as well and, after extended toy commercial chase sekwence, he captured.
But wait! Dere’s more! Unfortunately. Poison Ivy spring Mr. Freeze from Arkham Asylum. Dey team up to freeze Gotham city wit giant teleskope. Meanwhile, dying Alfred demonstrate best sound judgement since his decision to show Vicky Vale de Batcave by giving Barbara a Batgirl outfit he made. For her? Maybe. But monster suspect he aktually made for himself and just gave to her as an afterthought. “Oh, uh, de rubber girly suit? Dat’s for…dat’s for…dat’s for you!”
Dey team up and go after Freeze/Ivy.
Blah blah blah puns. Blah blah blah explosions. Blah blah blah Bat trio save de day. Blah blah blah Alfred doesn’t die. Blah blah blah.
Bleh.
Verdikt: De movie dat temporarily killed de Bat franchise – or, as Mr. Freeze would say: “Poot eet on ice.”
Rating: 1 chocolate chippee cookie. But be careful. One chip really a mouse turd.
Does Cookie Monster actually watch these movies all the way through?
I have this image of cookie monster mashing on the fast forward button. lol
Excellent review.
I had the misfortune to watch this one at the cinema when it came out. Not a pleasant experience.
One chip really a mouse turd. Ok, NOW you’re dipping into sugar free territory. 😆
This is the one we walked out of the theater on. There was action and color and George Clooney – you’d think there’d be SOMETHING to keep my attention, just somehow every scene seemed like a taunt that I must not have anything better to do and it was a lie from the pit! It was just one “maybe it will get better” scene after another.
I hated this movie the first time and refused to watch it again. No kidding mouse turds. 🙂
😆
I will agree with you on this one! I’m pretty sure (if I recall correctly), that there’s a fight scene in this one where they play footage forward then backward then forward again – like an episode of The Monkees.
Terrible movie.
das
I remember seeing this one, Cookie! It was very very lame. Not believable at all. Sorry you had to suffer.
Have a great night!!
Lisa R
Batman & Robin although not a bad movie is more average maybe 2 out of 5 at most, poor casting decisions and Clooney being Batman didn’t do the movie any good, story too.
Should of kept Val Kilmer in the role in my opinion anyway, a better Batman than Clooney by a huge margin.
Writer then needed to shred, and eject the script into the nearest Black hole and start again from scratch.
I liked The Riddler character personally from the other movie, should of done a story about a new villian teaming up with an escaped Riddler out for revenge against Batman and all those he holds dear.
A fair assessment il’d say.
I put myself through this torture tonight…
A few notes:
– The Batmobile is powered by a multi-colored disco ball in the nose?!?
– “Hockey team from hell”? Really?
– Robin climbing the outside of the rocket at 25,000+ feet…hypoxia anyone?
– Dr Woodrue and Bane…at least now I know where Mexican Wrestlers come from 😉
– A Blacklight Zombie Gang? Because every gang wants to wear phosphorescent body paints and contacts???
– The whole Biker Race scene seemed more like Rocky Horror combined with Road Warrior than a Batman franchise.
Barbara watched along with me until she saw Mr. Freeze singing “I’m Mr. White Christmas” while watching a Rankin & Bass animation. She had had enough at that point and left to get Chocolate!
Wow, such a big, almost operatic opening, holding such wonder, such promise… And then on comes the stupid. “I wanna car!” “This is why Superman works alone.” Guh. When they leave, even Alfred looks like he wishes he were ANYWHERE else. Although, I will admit to laughing at the hard plastic/rubber ass-pants.
The whole opening sequence doesn’t even pay passing regard to anything remotely resembling actual physics and is just dumb to boot. How did they know they would need ice skates built into their boots? (Just for example.)
I can’t help but think they were TRYING to go for the cheesiness of the original series, but they never go quite far enough (or maybe it’s TOO far, I don’t know), or are quite self-aware enough, to ever carry it off. If you’re going to have a stupid fight, at LEAST put in the BAM!s and POW!s
And Arnie’s whole character and dialogue? Ugh. You nailed it with this one, cookie. Just dreadful.
These mad-scientists read their dialogue like they’re in a 10th grade production of the Bride of Frankenstein. Also, how can you drill “three concentric holes” into a brain? Wouldn’t it just be then one big hole? Like the one I want to shoot through my head as I’m watching this movie?
Wow, Batman comes across in this movie like some kind of prickish, out of touch one-percenter. Kick his rubber-clad ass, plant-lady!!
As you noted Cookie, we had another overly long and pointless “villain crashes the charity ball” bit. BO-RING.
Yet another pointless sequence with the motorcycle race. What does this have to do with anything?? Was this just so Robin could save her and they could “bond”? Oh wait, so it turns out Alfred is dying and Batman is still keeping him in (likely) underpaid servitude. Jerk.
Given Poison Ivy’s plan, perhaps I should say that this is more like a high school production of Little Shop of Horrors. Feed me, Seymour! Feed me all night long!
We also get treated to a Max Headroom version of Alfred? Hell freezes over, indeed.
So many questions:
How does cold make you mutate?
Why does Freeze have to stay cold?
What the Hell was George Clooney thinking?
Or Uma Thurman, for that matter?
If her skin has chlorophyll, shouldn’t she be green, like an Orion Slave Girl? And why is she channelling Mae West?
Why were the mirrors on what is supposedly an astronomical telescope labelled “U.S. Army”? Hmmm.
Why did the telescope EXPLODE upon impact? What the Hell was powering that thing?
I thought plant-lady got eaten by Audrey II, why was she in the cell at the end?
I kind of found myself hoping for Ivy and Freeze actually. Everybody else was kind of (as in very) obnoxious. I did like that Freeze actually completely ignored Batman’s final little speech about revenge and went all ice-pick (we’re to assume) on plant-lady.
Did anyone else get continually reminded of these during the whole movie? It was kind of warm here today:
So many questions:
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3372/3484169520_10e2395d13_z.jpg
Anyway, the vis-effects were pretty good.
I’ll just jump ahead to Spawn, thanks. It looks like it has potential.
“Rating: 1 chocolate chippee cookie. But be careful. One chip really a mouse turd.”
😆 😆 😆
My best memory of seeing this in the theater was hearing a dad and his young son sitting behind me. About when Mr. Freeze is at his horribly campiest, the little boy says, ‘Daddy, I want to go see Mommy.’ They left that moment. If only I’d done the same!
@ Tam Dixon – And this is me, wonderin’ how many folks a’piddled in that pool. 😉
@ Joey – I received the olive oil from Chacewater in California. The first one I’ve tried is their award winning Allegra extra virgin, described as having ‘a soft green entry, aromas of fresh cut grass, slight bitterness and is mildly pungent’. I think that describes it perfectly. First time I used it was in a salad with balsamic vinegar, and I was not aware of the bitter finish. But when used for dipping it’s more noticable, but not unpleasant (however, I don’t think you would care for it because you said before that you don’t like bitter flavors, if I remember correctly). As far as I’m concerned, it’s delicious. Tastes nothing like the commercial ‘extra virgin’ olive oils from the grocery store (the ‘grassy’ flavor seems to be a desirable quality in olive oils, and something I have not noticed in the ones I’ve been buying). I also have four sample bottles of some of their other extra virgion oils – two mild, one pungent, and one flavored with lemon. I can’t wait to try them, but I must go easy since they are a bit precious. I will still use store olive oil for basic cooking (like eggs, for instance), but will certainly use this when I really want to enjoy the flavor of the oil, such as in salads, or when dipping.
Just thought I’d share. I’m not sure if you’re a big fan of olive oil seeing as how you tend to like the Asian style of cooking so much, but I figured maybe somewhere in your DNA at least one tiny little Italian gene has managed to influence your tastebuds somehow. 😉
das
The worst part of this movie is the Bat credit card. Probably THE sign that the film has gone totally and absolutely wrong. This is a hero that supposedly stays in the shadows and has to operate that way out of necessity. He’s all about legends and the stories criminals tell each other about him are enough to scare the crap out of most of them. But now he’s walking around, back to the campy shit, and enjoys flaunting his celebrity status. I understand the dude is a popular icon and ripe for corporate whoring, but from a purely storytelling POV, this is just bullshit. Is the cardholder Bruce Wayne or Batman?
HOw was your Canada day long weekend, Joe?
I think the opening sequence of this movie broke every law of physics there is. From the law of gravity to the laws of thermodynamics. Not to mention the laws of narrative, good taste and logic!
It was lucky that Wayne Enterprises had the forethought to print their logo on all their scientific equipment otherwise Poison Ivy might have ended up trying to kill the CEO of Pyrex!
My favourite line of the movie is when the cooling got turned back on in Mr Freeze’s lair/lab. Everyone started freezing and one of the cops in attendance yells “My lungs! My lungs are freezing!” That’s the first thing I’d yell if my lungs were freezing too.
And if Dr Fries had just invested in a guard rail between his control panel and the vat of cryogenic fluid then none of this would have happened!
The whole sick Alfred sub plot was just depressing.
I think 1 rat turd cookie is being generous!
Elle Macpherson . . . Australian . . . Yadda yadda yadda.
@gforce The VFX Supervisor for this movie was Andrew Adamson who later went on to direct the Shrek and Chronicles of Narnia movies.
explosive garden vegetible diarhea. What a perfect description. I’d forgotten most of the “plot” in this movie, and now I can see it was a self defense mechanism . The butt and codpiece shots were the first warning, but hey, they weren’t hard on the eyes. The “That’s why Superman works alone” remark was a nice putdown. Alas, that was the last decent quip in the whol movie. As so ably pointed out by others here, the laws of physics were not just ignore, they were relentlessly mocked. I allow a certain amount of leeway, given we’re talking universes where people fly, have x ray vision, control weather, shoot beams of light out of their eyes, and other misc. things, but at least in the comics they try to hold to a certain internal consistancy. That is missing here. In the last movie, we got 2 big name actors hamming it up. In this one, they decide to up the ante by giving us not two, but three villians, and raising us a bat-babe. Final and definitive proof quantity is not equal to quality.
The biggest problem I had with Clooney in this role, is that he is simply too well adjusted. Too nice guy. Not brooding enough, and way to comfortable with having a who is not even a teenager coming into his life and whining about, well, everything. Speaking of whom, I hope the Batcave comes equipped with a cold shower. Or something to cool Robin off so he can marginally function when out doing the hero thing. Hmm, maybe that’s why they went with Mr. Freeze as villian d’joure. (sorry about the spelling)
Well, at least the newer Batty movies won’t be so bad. Meantime, hope the holiday week finds you well and happy.(and that all your readers are the same, WITH functional power if on the east coast)
Mouse turd? Oh noes, hantavirus!
I agree with Cookie’s rating. The Batman story is supposed to be dark, and in some ways, tragic. I thought Tim Burton did a great job of this (well, he did in his first Batman film), but by this point, the franchise had completely lost it’s way and had become very slap-stick.
Thankfully, love or hate ’em, I think the latest bunch of Batman films recaptures the original spirit. While Batman’s certainly no villain, he’s more of a super-anti-hero (hence, the Dark Knight).
Das: I’ll take a shower and be good as new. 😉
On the anime subject I’ve been watching Persona 4, it’s a very good series with some incredible and detailed animation.
Basically about a boy who is probably about 17 transfers from Tokyo to the suburbs and is living with uncle and cousin as his parents have gone away for a long period.
At his new school he meets Yousuke and Chie, and learns about the midnight channel, the students think you see your soulmate on this channel at midnight which suddenly appears on your TV.
When people go missing, turning up murdered after appearing on the midnight channel they decide the two are linked, they go to Yousukes dads TV shop and accidently fall through the TV after discovering they can reach inside. Inside they appear in the ‘TV world’ and learn that whenever its foggy in the real world someone ends up murdered. From a character called Kuma.
They end up attacked by what they call ‘Shadows’ more monsters in reality and Narukami Yu awakens his ‘Persona’ and battles them.
Basically the anime is about the group investigating the connection between the murders and the Midnight channel/TV world, obviously inside this world they battle shadows etc.
Obviously a ton more happens, but this is basically what happens in the first episode, theres like 24, more 25 other episodes to watch, the animation and music is really good.
The story in this series is pretty likable and indepth.
It’s out in Canada Sept 18th Joe on DVD/Blu Ray Joe and is well worth watching.
I love the opening music. This is one of the second openings, contains no spoilers what so ever. It’s a variation of an opening used in the anime.
@ Maggiemayday – 😆 Good thing I didn’t know about hantavirus when I was a kid. Back then mice would get into the attic (the playroom) and eat our crayons, and then their wee poops would come out in rainbow colors. We called ’em Barbie doll crayons. 😛 (And no, we didn’t play with them – we knew they were mouse poops.)
Hey, at least we didn’t think they were rainbow jimmies! 😉
das
@das: eeeewwwww!