The final film in the initial 1990s run of "Batman" Hollywood adaptations, "Batman and Robin" is just an awful movie by all accounts. I gave "Batman Forever" some slack because that movie honestly does have its moments. Val Kilmer is both a much better Batman and a much better Bruce Wayne than George Clooney, and Jim Carrey's Riddler and Tommy Lee Jones's Two-Face are much better villains than what we see here. Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze just spouts too many puns, almost every word that comes out of his mouth is somehow connected to "ice" or "cold" or "freezing." Uma Thurman's Poison Ivy isn't that bad, she's probably the best character in this movie. Bane (Robert Swenson) is just a straight-up butchering of the character from the comics and acts as more a beefy hulking sidekick for Poison Ivy to bark orders to. Chris O'Donnell's Robin has somehow lost all of his charisma and charm from the previous movie, acting like a spoiled brat, even when he's not under Poison Ivy's spell. Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl is awful as well, she's bland and just delivers a terrible performance. Nothing good can be written about the story or the acting in this movie, save for a half-decent performance by Uma Thurman, as stated earlier.
Honestly the only things that elevate this movie to get as high as 3 stars in my book are the production values and the costume and set design. And by that metric, you would just as well watch any other of the "Batman" movies. Heck, nearly any other action movie period. This movie sucks.
Honestly the only things that elevate this movie to get as high as 3 stars in my book are the production values and the costume and set design. And by that metric, you would just as well watch any other of the "Batman" movies. Heck, nearly any other action movie period. This movie sucks.