by Elliot Fogarty

Created on: August 03, 2008   Last Updated: August 07, 2008

It's difficult to get to watching Batman & Robin without trawling through the barrage of criticism that has been thrown its way since its release in 1997. Many will have heard of the accusations leveled at Joel Schumacher's second entry in the Bat franchise, but let's skip to the headlines: It's been labeled as poorly written, acted and directed respectfully; with a terrible plot and some hideous mistreatment of key characters. After all this, there's still the vulgar neon colouring that doesn't let up throughout the movie. And that's not even mentioning the rubber nipples...

The sad fact is that this is a film that lives up to these accusations. To put it bluntly, it is awful. Not only does it reduce one of modern fiction's greatest characters to a laughing stock, it does so without any charm, wit, or ability to string together a semi-cohesive storyline. Some defenders of the film claim its campy similarities to Adam West's 1960s Batman, however whilst West's serial was knowingly daft and generally entertaining, this film falls hideously flat.

Many who starred in the film have distanced themselves from it, not least Batman himself, George Clooney. In fairness, Clooney isn't bad in playing the playboy billionaire that is Bruce Wayne. Indeed, his scene with an unwell Alfred (Michael Gough, being the only actor to come out of this with his dignity intact) is surprisingly touching. His Batman however is awful, thanks largely to the material he has been given. The signs are ominous within the opening minutes, with Batman telling Chris O'Donnell's brat of a sidekick Robin This is why Superman works alone', following the not-so Boy Wonder's first of many childish outbursts. By the time you witness Batman at a charity auction displaying his Bat-credit card' (yes, really) and bickering with Robin, all memories of the dark, mysterious world Tim Burton created and Michael Keaton became immersed in feels like a long, long time ago.

With the very essence of Batman's character being a withdrawn introvert (not that you'd know it from this film), the previous three entries to the franchise have used larger-then-life villains to counterbalance our hero's shadowy characteristics, which for the most part have been successful (Save for Tommy Lee-Jones' Two-Face.). This film has no less then three villains and to summarize, all three fail to the point of sheer incompetencey. How on earth an actress as talented as Uma Thurman can overact and overkill the plant-saving Poison Ivy is

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>