‘Batman & Robin’ Is 20 Years Old Today (And Just As Insane As You Remember)

Where to Stream:

Batman & Robin

Since it first crashed through movie theater skylights 20 years ago, Batman & Robin has earned the dubious dishonor of being called the worst superhero movie of all time. Not even lovingly sculpted rubber chest plates could protect the franchise from overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics and viewers. The superhero franchise received a deadly poisoned kiss on June 20, 1997, but now that 20 years have passed and the superhero genre is alive and dominating the box office, is Batman & Robin still that bad?

Holy hockey sticks, Batman, it is that bad.

I love loving things. I love loving weird things. I love loving bad things. Batman & Robin is weird and bad and very hard to love. I’m not here to be a stuck-up superhero stickler. I love funny superheroes. Give me Adam West over Christian Bale or Ben Affleck, please! And I can see that director Joel Schumacher was going for a Batman ’66 vibe with B&R. The film is all Dutch angles, cavernous spaces, and corny jokes. The problem is, though, the film is all camp with no heart–and you can’t have camp without heart. The actors perform as if they were tricked into playing out Schumacher’s rubberiest fantasies, and the movie shifts from being downright bizarre to being painfully overwrought. Watching Batman & Robin 20 years later, having both Ben Affleck’s gravel-voiced killing machine and Adam West’s stalwart boy scout fresh in my mind, was a truly unsettling experience. If you think there’s no possible way Batman & Robin could be as insane as you remember, I’m here to tell you that it’s actually even more insane than you remember.

Start up a digital copy of Batman & Robin today and you’ll find that the movie wastes no time letting you know what it’s all about:

The very first shots of the movie are of Bat-Nips and Bat-Butts and Batt-Bulges. Both Batman (a noticeably upset George Clooney) and Robin (a whiny Chris O’Donnell) immediately get rubbery T&A shots. We see two codpieces in this movie before we see a single face. I get that superheroes are inherently sexy; that’s a driving force behind today’s epic Chris debate. But in this movie? It’s weird because Schumacher’s movie, Bat-Dongs aside, is a live-action cartoon. It literally uses cartoon sound effects multiple times. This is a family superhero movie, one where kids get very familiar with what Batman’s butt looks like.

If you don’t think this movie was made with kids in mind, need I remind you that Batman slides down a dinosaur’s back Fred Flintstone-style in the opening scene?

Absolutely no one in 1997 was asking for the Batman movies to reboot the campy brilliance of Batman ’66. After comic book writer/artist Frank Miller’s one-two punch of Year One and The Dark Knight Returns in the ’80s, fans expected the Dark Knight to be dark. Tim Burton cemented that idea with his 1989 film, a film that proved a superhero movie could be a serious affair (while also being its own unique brand of morose camp). Instead of giving fans what they wanted, Schumacher returned to the very thing 1989’s Batman was created to replace. And instead of having Batman ’66’s colorfully campy aesthetic, Batman & Robin looks like a music video from U2’s Pop era.

Nothing makes me appreciate the late Adam West more than George Clooney’s one-foot-out-the-Batcave Bruce Wayne.

Batman & Robin feels like a movie that happened to George Clooney. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more suave and charming leading man, but Clooney mumbles and nails exactly zero jokes. The image above is Clooney’s face after delivering a zinger, BTW. I’m with ya, George.

With a zombie George under the cowl, Batman & Robin resorts to more and more ludicrous bat-gadgets as a substitute for a personality. We get a teeny Bat-iPhone, Bat-ice-skates, a Bat-Zamboni, and… a Bat-Credit-Card.

It’s good thru “forever.” Get it? Because Batman Forever? At least the credit card sells jokes better than Clooney!

Unlike Clooney, Chris O’Donnell–the original superhero Chris, thank you very much–gives his Robin a ton of personality. That personality can be summed up with one screengrab:

Dick lives up to his namesake every time he’s on screen. He’s either posturing like a pick-up artist protege or whining about family; when Bruce Wayne declares Alicia Silverstone’s Barbara Wilson a member of their family, Dick manages to do both. Robin gets one kinda cool moment in the film, when he rips off his lips.

Along with everything from his eyebrows to his pinky toes, Robin’s lips are also encased in rubber–so they can withstand one of Poison Ivy’s deadly kisses!

Maybe Batman and Robin don’t seem cool in this movie because they’re up against the coolest villain of all time: Mr. Freeze! I apologize for that pun, but it’s definitely not worse than the ones Arnold Schwarzenegger drops.

The Batman ’66 villains were all about puns, themed henchmen, and branded weaponry. Batman’s DNA is equal parts puns and pearls. Batman & Robin flubbed the pun portion by casting Arnold Schwarzenegger, a guy known for his thick Austrian accent. Schwarzenegger can use his accent for comic effect, like when he says normal lines like “I’ll be back” or “it’s not a tumor.” Having him spit out horrible puns is just a hat on a hat. Still, the Freeze-inator is the most entertaining character to watch, whether he’s conducting his a chorus of henchmen…

…watching his wedding video in what looks like a sub-zero Sears…

…impersonating a refrigerated Hannibal Lecter…

…or crying ice.

And because of Mr. Freeze, Batman & Robin could get credit for creating the Women in Refrigerators trope two years before that term was coined–because it features a fridged female character that’s actually kept in a literal refrigerator.

Batman & Robin stood apart from nearly every other superhero movie at the time for featuring both a female supervillain and a female superhero. Of course this is Batman & Robin so they’re…well, they’re just as wild as all the other characters. Uma Thurman chews scenery as Poison Ivy, a character whose powers include poison kisses and the stamina to perform monologue after monologue. How did she get her powers? Originally a mousy and anxious botanist, Dr. Pamela Isley was pushed into a shelf stocked with poison and thus gifted the proportional sex appeal of a plant.

See? She’s just as sexy as any plant!

When Poison Ivy isn’t monologuing, she’s busy blowing pheromone dust in everyone’s face. For her big villainous debut, Ivy crashes an appropriately jungle-themed charity auction while wearing a giant pink gorilla costume. As she slips out of the foam muscle and fake fur, Joel Schumacher reminds us once again what he’s all about.

This movie has as many nipple shots as Batman has batarangs.

Not to be outdone, Poison Ivy then saunters over to Batman and Robin and proves that she can pun it up with the big boys–of course, her puns are way more suggestive than Mr. Freeze’s. Remember, plants are sexy!

By Poison Ivy’s side is the muscular brute Bane, a far cry from Tom Hardy’s muffled and jacked British dandy. This monosyllabic Bane does little more than grunt, push down walls, and sport a jaunty fedora. Twice.

Bane doesn’t do much, but Bane does it in style.

On the good guy side, Batman & Robin marks the only big screen appearance of Batgirl. Alicia Silverstone’s Barbara was changed from being Commissioner Gordon’s daughter to Alfred’s niece, a move that actually makes sense considering how small a role the commissioner played in this iteration of the Bat-franchise. Still, Batgirl’s part of the film’s most baffling plot: Alfred’s impending death!

Yes, a movie with dinosaur surfing and pink gorilla nipples also includes ruminations on mortality. Instead of being a full-on madcap romp like Batman ’66, this movie gets tripped up on dumb dramatic moments as Bruce Wayne struggles with the impending demise of his father figure. Barbara arrives in time to witness Alfred’s mad search for his long lost brother Wilfred, an international butler. This plot gives us a truly priceless moment:

But Barbara isn’t just a stuffy English schoolgirl. For one thing, she doesn’t have even the slightest trace of an accent. She also has a dirty secret: she competes in late night motorcycle races against Clockwork Orange characters and what I can only describe as Juggalo drag queens. Those races are, of course, overseen by Coolio.

And no, Coolio does not have a song on the Batman & Robin soundtrack. Jewel, however, does.

Eventually, Barbara stumbles across the CD-ROM of secrets Alfred was hoping to send to Wilfred. The CD-ROM contained every bit of information about Batman and Robin, as well as an artificial intelligence version of Alfred. Assuming that Barbara would also want to fight crime, Alfred went on ahead and designed a Batsuit for her too. That leads us to the most upsetting part of this film:

What the hell, Alfred? She’s your niece!

In the final showdown with the united Poison Ivy and Mr. Freeze, Batgirl jumps into the fray at just the right time, saving Batman and Robin and tossing out a snarky superhero one-liner.

Batgirl, you’re a pro already! Of course Batman, being a total drip, asks why Batgirl didn’t pick something more politically correct like “Batwoman” or “Batperson.” Hey Batman–you let your 80-year-old butler dress you up in fetish gear. Maybe don’t judge other people’s choices?

The Terrific Trio fights to stop Mr. Freeze’s plan to turn a giant, crystal-powered telescope into a freezing ray. Of course before they move from the Poison Ivy level to the Mr. Freeze level, Batman, Robin, and Batgirl all stop off somewhere to change into cool black and silver versions of their costumes.

Seriously, did Alfred design all three of those? Alfred has a life, y’all, and I’d much rather watch Alfred’s octogenarian Project Runway adventures than anything else in Batman & Robin.

With their dope new nipple suits, the three of them defrost Gotham City and get the key to curing Alfred (which was coincidentally located in Mr. Freeze’s cryo-armor all along!).

So… crazy, right? This movie is exhausting. I genuinely love campy superheroics and ridiculous action, but I now know that I only like it when the actors are actually up to the challenge and the fun isn’t diluted with long monologues and dreary death talk. Batman & Robin is every bit as insane as you remember it being. Bane wears a fedora. Poison Ivy sexes up a monkey suit. Batgirl says the line “suit me up, Uncle Alfred.” Mr. Freeze forces his henchmen to sing carols. Joel Schumacher has no shame. And I’m very, very tired.

Until next time…