Last century’s Batman films now look like blockbusters from another dimension

https://www.avclub.com/last-century-s-batman-films-now-look-like-blockbusters-1798270887

Just as Burton refined his take on the Bat the second time around, bringing it closer to the mad movie in his head, Schumacher used the roaring financial success of Batman Forever to buy trust in an even loonier adaptation. The director is said to have shouted, “Remember people, this is a cartoon” before takes on the set of Batman & Robin. It had the desired effect: The film boasts the look, feel, and elastic physical reality of particularly awful Saturday morning kiddie fare. Schumacher evidently wanted not just a cartoon, but also a dopey sex comedy, a treacly cancer drama, and yet another sidekick origin story (this one for Batgirl, played by a severely miscast Alicia Silverstone).

Speaking of miscasting, George Clooney takes the mantle from Kilmer, and though he certainly has the debonair quality necessary to portray Wayne, it’s hard not to detect a note of embarrassment every time he spouts some groan-worthy gag while encased in a newly nippled Batsuit. No one else seems quite embarrassed enough: not O’Donnell, whose Robin is reduced to a petulant crybaby; not Uma Thurman, vamping like Elvira and cooing terrible flora-based double entendres as Poison Ivy; and certainly not Arnold Schwarzenegger, given top billing—and an obscene paycheck—for the duty of delivering no less than 19 ice-related one-liners. (The script, by Oscar-winning hack Akiva Goldsman, pays lip service to the anguish of Mr. Freeze, undercutting his tragic backstory by turning him into a pun machine.)

Having brooded his way through three movies, Bruce Wayne seems, in Batman & Robin, to have gotten a handle on his double life. He feels no need this time to let the bat out of the bag to his girlfriend—maybe because she’s a total placeholder love interest, played by a dead-eyed Elle Macpherson. Schumacher repositions the swinging bachelor and longtime loner as a family man, meting out tough love to his surrogate children and mourning the impending demise of his father figure, a very sick Alfred. In theory, that change of approach could be interesting, but Batman & Robin is too stuffed with supporting characters and limp comedy to ever operate as a credible vision of human behavior. It makes its predecessor look like… well, The Dark Knight or something.

Much has already been written about the movie’s missteps—its ice-skating action scenes, its “anatomically correct” uniforms, its truly horrendous special effects. But words alone do no justice to the MST3K-worthy badness of the scene below. Okay, maybe a few words can. Try “seductive monkey-suit dance,” or “the dynamic duo are available for parties.”

If there’s any case to be made for Schumacher’s Batman movies, it’s that they’re exactly what their director wanted them to be—a dubious victory, perhaps, but one that isn’t often achieved within the framework of a mega-budget Hollywood franchise. Today’s comic-book movies, especially those based on characters from DC’s major rival company, tend to conform the personalities of their makers to a sort of house style. No one, by contrast, could accuse either Burton or Schumacher of applying their massive studio resources to something anonymous; they’ve made Burton and Schumacher movies that happen to feature Batman, not the other way around. On the other hand, Batman is a character rich enough to inspire better, less disposable entertainments, the kind that do more than dress expensive actors up in funny costumes and send them careening across sound stages. Anyone convinced that Nolan’s Batman movies are “too serious” for their own good should remember the alternative. Endless Michael Caine speeches are far preferable to George Clooney flashing a Batman credit card.