Batman is a household name, so if his products are making money, they keep making more of it.
That was the problem with Batman and Robin. After two box office successes and a third film that was kinda “meh”, they rolled the dice yet again and crapped out this time.
The story was so bad that Val Kilmer joined the former Batman club with Michael Keaton. In his place was George Clooney. In case you didn’t know this, Clooney still regrets this role today. He appreciated the opportunity because it got him away from the TV and into more films, but thanks to terrible ratings, this movie was a box office bomb.
To put everything into perspective, Batman and Robin came out in 1997. It was a solid eight years before Christopher Nolan was able to revive the once dead Batman franchise. He can owe some gratitude to this film since it was the last time Batman had a pulse and a weak one at that.
Since the formula for five lead actors/actresses was all the rage in Batman Forever, they went back to the well for this one. Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Mr. Freeze the main bad guy. His partner in crime is Poison Ivy, played by Uma Thurman. Even she has a sidekick, Bane, played Jeep Swenson. Bane at this point is an afterthought and not given much to work with, except destroying things.
Christopher O’Donnell returns as Robin, while Alicia Silverstone is thrown into the mix as Batgirl, another useless character we didn’t need at the stage. That’s six main characters all fighting for screentime, which means a lot of the movie features more than one or two at a time.
The tone of the movie remains the same, cartoonish. Mr. Freeze by far the most cartoonish of them all. All his lines are cheesy puns and really make him look like a terrible bad guy. At least Poison Ivy is able to come across as a ruthless bad guy, while Bane looks weaker than all of them combined.
Batman and Robin was a disaster and put a nail in the coffin for almost a decade. Thankfully this was the last movie that made the caped crusader look like a pushover. 1/10
Ten Stars or Less 