Customer Reviews

Batman & Robin

5 star:		(92)
4 star:		(53)
3 star:		(59)
2 star:		(69)
1 star:		(325)

 

 

I'll admit that the price is cheap. Having all four films for less than $10 is great, but upon watching the first disc, I find that the quality of the transfer is absolutely terrible. Lots and lots of pixelation artifacts, especially when there's black on the screen, and let's face it, BATMAN was not a brightly lit film. The quality is barely, BAREly above VHS. I feel like they hooked a VCR up to a DVD recorder and had at it. I'm not even talking about grain (which I would expect from an older film transfer), but rather poor resolution. There are no solid diagonal lines, everything is blocky. The video looks like an SVCD that was poorly upconverted to DVD.

It's good value, if you're just looking for an affordable way to complete your collection, but if you're used to DVD-quality video, you will be disappointed...

This set is amazing! It is all 4 movies for a very low price of 10 bucks. I picked this up at my local Target on Thursday and watched all the batman movies through the weekend. This set includes four Batman films. Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Batman Forever (1995), and Batman & Robin (1997). The special features include some character facts and production notes. It is all very basic reading material on the disc, but I found a lot of it to be very interesting. They could have had absolutely no special features at all, and I still would think this set is worth it! Is this set better than the Motion Picture Anthology? Well it depends on how much you care about these movies to want to watch all the special features for them. I would say I wouldn't mind watching the special features of the first two movies, but the last two I could do without. As far as the price goes, this set is better because it is only 10 bucks and the anthology is $80. As far as picture quality goes, all the films looked great to me. You can't really go wrong with this release, you get 4 films for 10 bucks in a single DVD case on 2 discs (and the discs are double sided with one movie on each side for those worried about compression)! Talk about saving shelf space! I am thinking of buying the other sets in this series like the superman and matrix collections and replacing my existing DVDs with them just to save shelf space alone! Anyways this is the first of the "4 film favorites" collections that I have bought and I am very happy with the purchase. Sure not ALL the films are that great, but your going to be spending more than 10 bucks for just one of these films and I can tell you that 2 of the films should be owned by everyone.

Way back in 1989, long before the current influx of superhero films, millions of people lined up to see Michael Keaton put on Batman's cape.....nah, let's be honest, people lined up to see Jack Nicholson's version of the Joker. However, Keaton's wonderful performance shocked audiences and so began a string of successful films that got progressively campier over time.

If you're like me, you thought "Batman" was excellent, liked "Batman Returns" even though alterations were made to the Penguin, enjoyed Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey in "Batman Forever" despite the campiness, and thanked the good Lord above that "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" managed to wipe away the stain of the fourth film in this collection, "Batman and Robin."


This "Four Film Favorites" collection gives fans of Batman and superheroes in general all four of Warner Brothers' late century versions of Batman on two bare bones discs. According to the box, each film comes with production notes. What this boils down to is a stills gallery, brief actor bios, and a few lines about makeup, special effects, and Batman's wonderful toys.

The actual films are presented in a widescreen format and appear to lack any major clean-ups. The first film is a bit grainy at moments and the third film had faint traces of pixellation in close-ups, but the second and fourth film look visually excellent.

I won't waste any time reviewing each film in depth. If you want this collection, you probably already know why you are getting it. I purchased it primarily for the first and third films in the franchise. Being a completionist, though, I wanted to get the second and, yep, even the fourth film in this collection. This two-disc set gives you all four films for a wonderful price.

Highly recommended to fans of Batman or comic book films who want all four of these movies without breaking the bank. It will give you a taste of some of the best and some of the worst moments in comic film history!

How to review one of the five worst movies ever made?

I could say that Batman and Robin plays less like a superhero movie and more like an episode of Queer Eye for the Hero Guy; but that doesn't quite capture the true level of putrid that this film reaches.

I could say that Alicia Silverstone (playing Batgirl, if you can believe it) and spandex pants are not friends; but that might seem a little too snarky.

I could say that Joel Schumacher's "direction" is so non-existent and Akiva Goidsman "writing" so abysmal that the entire film never even manages to reach the quality of the average high school talent show; but that doesn't give enough credit to talent shows.

I could point out that all the flashing neon that assaults the viewers during nearly every scene (and from nearly every Bat device that the "stealthy" Dark Knight uses) causes severe eye strain before the movie is half way through; but most viewers lost their vision when their eyes were poked out by the huge, hard nipples on the Batsuit, and the rest of the viewers either turned it off or committed suicide before the halfway mark anyway.

I could say that Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Chris O'Donnell, Uma Thurman, and Alicia Silverstone all turn in the worst performances of their entire careers (and with Silverstone that's really saying something); but that might be too obvious since none of them ever mentions this film at all, even when asked about it.

But instead of saying all that I think I can sum it up best like this:

Not since "Manos: The Hands of Fate" (the worst film ever made) have I ever actually felt myself aging second by second while watching a movie until I watched Batman and Robin.

I have no doubt that this movie plays on a continuous loop in hell.

Ed Wood is alive and working under the name Joel Schumacher! Run for your lives! "Batman and Robin" is the fourth film in a movie series which, in a span of only eight years, has managed to go from good to outstanding to bad to stomach churning retartedness.

As the "film" begins, Batman and Robin are summoned to battle a new villain, Mr. Freeze, who has broken into a museum and is attempting to steal a big diamond to power his freeze machine (oh so THAT'S what diamonds are good for). The opening scene manages to rival the opening scene of 1996's "Romeo and Juliet" as the most ridiculous movie sequence ever put to film. Anyway, soon they have to battle other villains as well, Poison Ivy (Thurman) and Bane (Swenson).

George Clooney steps into the Batsuit this time and it's now official, Batman has no personality whatsoever. It's not Clooney's fault, he's just going by the script and by Schumacher's (shudder) direction. Batman is known as the Dark Knight, meaning that Batman is supposed to have a dark, brooding personality. Joel Schumacher (vomit) has managed to change all that over the course of two films, as Batman is now a cartoon. He always has a lame pun to spout out or an afterschool special message to deliver.

Speaking of puns, that's all Mr. Freeze has to say. He hardly has one line of dialogue which doesn't involve a pun using any of the words: cool, cold, ice, freeze or chill. After the first two, you're sick of it. But, alas, it continues.

As with "Batman Forever", there are way too many characters. One villain is all that's needed, not three. Bane is the worst of the three, which is surprising because of what little I know of the comic books, Bane was a major force. Here he's just a masked goon, grunting like Frankenstein's monster. And he's also amazingly easy to defeat, as his weakness are these big tubes coming out of his head. Pull one out, and he's dead. If he walks into a coat rack, he's a goner. Poison Ivy is way too talky, and most of the time she's babbling to herself, which is even more irritating.

Gotham City now represents a city which must exist on some other planet other than Earth. The laws of gravity seem to have little effect in this world. Also, it seems that no one really lives in Gotham, except for street criminals, which makes me wonder why in a city protected by Batman would there be the highest crime rate ever in the history of civilization? Batman's not protecting anyone, as there's mass terror constantly going on in the streets. Perhaps it's Joel Schumacher's (gag) views of capital punishment at play here, because in both "Batman Forever" and here, long speeches are given about how it would be wrong to kill the main villain after he's been captured. Instead, to punish them for their crime of attempted mass homicide, villains in Joel Schumacher's (puke) vision of Gotham City get locked up in an asylum, which everyone knows they will break out of in no time to kill more people.

To go into further detail about all the ridiculous aspects of this movie would take a review longer than the written screenplay itself. So I'll just mention the worst of the bunch. Now, when Alicia Silverstone becomes Batgirl, she shows up late in the film to help Batman and Robin defeat Poison Ivy. Now, keep in mind that Silverstone has been living in Wayne Manor and chatting with Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson for the entire film. Also keep in mind that her Batgirl "disguise" wouldn't fool an infant. Anyway, she arrives, cleans house, and then chats with Batman and Robin... who DO NOT RECOGNIZE HER! She actually has to tell them who she is.

But the moment which made me groan the loudest comes at some sort of charity auction where old men are bidding on scantily dressed women on stage. Poison Ivy arrives and puts the audience under some sort of spell. Batman and Robin, who are actually at a party dressed as Batman and Robin, are also captivated by her spell. Soon the audience starts to bid on her, and Batman and Robin join in on the bidding. Batman increases the bid to something like seven million dollars, and then whips out, I kid you not, a Batman credit card, complete with the Batman logo on it as well as "BATMAN" typed out on it. This is absolutely the dumbest thing I have ever seen. Think about this for a moment won't you? What bank honors this card? Did they call Batman to offer him this special card? Only Batman can use this card, so do you think Batman does his own shopping? Perhaps goes to Ace Hardware to pick up some more Batapults and charges them to the Batcard? At that moment it became true, the Batman movie series, which once prided itself from being 180 degrees different in tone and style from the campy 60s TV show, is now just as good as the WORST episodes of that TV series.

I do give the film credit for two things. One is the casting of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a villain, but I only give credit to the concept, not the actual performance. Also, as with "Batman Forever", the film looks great. It looks like every penny of the budget was spent on the look of the film. The set design, costumes, and special effects are all top-notch.

I'm all for a silly summer movie. Sometimes I like shutting down most of my brain and just enjoying a fun movie. But to consider "Batman and Robin" to be fun, you'd have to completely tear your brain out of your head and throw it away, never to be used again. Please someone stop Joel Schumacher before he vomits into a film cannister again and tries to pass it off as a movie.

You know you're in trouble when "Batman & Robin" (1997) turns out to be less entertaining than the low-budget 1949 serial. Director Joel Schumacher deserves the blame for this comic-book fiasco and remains the Ultimate Bat Villain. George Clooney gives it his best shot as the Dark Knight, but has the misfortune of appearing in the all-time worst Batman movie.

This piece of excrement that calls itself a Batman film should have never seen the light of day. After "Forever" WB should have canned Joel Shumacher and got Tim Burton back. You could basicly see this coming by how campy "Forever" was. All of the characters were so poorly portrayed, it was like the Brady Bunch were wearing Batman, Robin, and Batgirl's costumes meaning these were not the same characters in the comics. They were different people. I don't blame the actors but the director and the writers. In my opinion, they should have hired Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, the geniouses behind the animated Batman. If you want a good Batman story that involves Batman, Robin, Batgirl, and Mr. Freeze, I recommend "SubZero". I also recommend "Mask of the Phantasm" which is the best of all the Batman films. If you haven't seen this movie, you are lucky and I envy you.

Even now to this day, I still can't seem to figure out how Schumacher managed to go from being able to pull it off well with "Batman Forever" and cause the movie series to tumble down to the ground with the abysmal follow-up movie entitled "Batman & Robin". That's probably what the third Batman movie should've been called. It's even funnier that they couldn't muster up a movie title more creative than "Batman & Robin". Now come on! Robin was in the third movie in the series. Even when brushing aside the uncreative movie title, "Batman & Robin" absolutely fails on almost all fronts, turning the dark and foreboding franchise from a chilling series into a laughable joke that's almost on par with a bad remake of the campy 60s series but more like bathtub TV material. It's really sad to see one of the darkest and most angst-ridden comic book characters become the laughing stock of the decade or possibly the century.

The main villains this time are the nefarious Mr. Freeze and the sultry villainess Pamela Isley also knows a Poison Ivy. George Clooney fills Batman shoes after the dark knight was played by Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer. Unfortunately, while I personally am not trying to criticize Clooney, he (at least at the time) was completely unfit for playing the mysterious dark knight crime-fighting hero. Chris O'Donnell's role as Robin was almost as ill-fated, faring much worse than in "Batman Forever". Where as in the previous movie, Robin at least showed reason to be angry and sometimes even snotty with the loss of much of his family, in "Batman & Robin", Robin comes off as just a spoiled brat with little or no common sense. Batgirl in this movie was absolutely despicable and wretched, looking more like something that I would've seen from a bondage video film. That Bat mobile was repulsive and disgusting to look at. Do we need to see close-up [rear] shots? Eww!

I don't mean to sound like a mad scientist with this review but most of the scenes are completely unrealistic. The scene where Robin was frozen and then revived after being thawed out was almost like a bad dream. HELLO! Freezing an entire human body would instantly kill him/her and even if the person didn't die immediately, the extremely low temperatures would cause immense tissue destruction and more than likely tortuous suffocation and it would take HOURS, not minutes, to unthaw a frozen human body. Believe me, I've tried to thaw out chicken in hot water and it took nearly an hour to do so. To add to that, a human would be killed just being in extremely cold water for too long and suffer fatal hypothermia...and this is without being frozen completely. Mr. Freeze's metal wings would more than likely only accelerate his fall to the ground. To add to that, how can diamonds enhance the cold temperatures needed to keep him alive? Diamonds actually amplify the heat generated by lights and would also scatter light and laser beams in all directions. Dry Ice or liquid air would've made much better material for Freeze's well-being. Perhaps this movie should've taken place on Ellesmere Island or in the icecaps of central Greenland with Mr. Freeze lying comfortably in the extremely cold weather of the Arctic or on top of a mountain and with with Poison Ivy, it should've taken place in like Florida for her ambitions.

Bane was the most despicable of all, being nothing more than just a steroid OD'd junkie whose role was no more than just the equivalent of a bear with rabies. In the comic books, he was an intelligent and evil character. In the movie, he's no more than just a pawn whose strength is because of a disgusting yellow fluid fed to his head by means of a series of tubes and he would be a goner if one of those tubes were severed by a coat hanger, light fixture, or just simply detached. What a horrible insult to a great character! Poison Ivy was rather disgusting as well, being a rather tasteless object that is nowhere near being sexy like Catwoman was from "Batman Returns" and Poison Ivy could'nt be able to able to save this movie from plummeting into the realm of mediocrity and artistic oblivion.

Schumacher could've been able to follow up on his grade A success that became "Batmen Forever" with the perfect balance between the colorful visuals and the dark undertones of the first two Batman movies. Sadly, none of that happened and instead was just a hodgepodge of colors and monotonous and boring dialogue that an elementary school student could surpass by entire oceans. On it's own, this movie is okay but this absolutely does no justice to it's three predecessors and should've have even been categorized with the movie series and should've been categorized separately from the other three. In fact, this hardly feels like a Batman movie at all. I, to this day, still can't believe that Schumacher pulled it off so well with "Batman Forever" and destroyed a legendary legacy with this burning wreckage of a movie. Nothing, not even the action sequences that came along nor the sympathetic role of Alfred battling health failure could've been able to salvage this garbage.

I find the whole ranting about the "Batman is Dead" to be somewhat exaggerated somewhat but I do have to admit that if the franchise is to be revived in the future, I sure don't see that happening anytime soon and Batman might as well be in a state of dormancy or hibernation while he recovers from the blow that "Batman & Robin" inflicted on him. Schumacher and company completely soiled a great legacy and deserved the high level of criticism for the mess his crew made. Crash a vase over my head for all I care but for a Bat-O-Phile like myself, give me the Gothic foreboding darkness of 1989's "Batman" or the Gothic, cold, wicked black & white undertones of 1992's "Batman Returns" or even the fun eye-candy of "Batman Forever" over the MGM Grand flashy colors of "Batman & Robin". We could wind up waiting for many years before Batman hops back onto the big screen again. "Batman & Robin" is a sad, crushing, and extremely ignominious bookend to a legendary legacy.

This movie really deserves one-fifteenth of a star.
I was really sad that the Batman franchise had sunk this low. After the fairly presentable Forever, Joel Schumacher apparently decided to mess up the series. There is only one word to describe this movie:BLEEEHHHHHHH!

Next I will tell you 10 things that are wrong with the movie (are you ready?)

1. The aerodynamic, multipurpose, satilite tracking, fully disposable, iron ore, morphing, horrible Batsuit. The nipples in Forever were stupid, but at least the yellow symbol was still there. Now there is a giant, silver bat on his chest. It looks like he's wearing a football jersey.

2. Robin's symbol. Now THAT'S dumb! The gold "R" with the green circle may be bland, but at least its recognizable. The "robin" looks like an albatross.

3. Freeze's awful acting. As if he could never say anything NOT refering to his heat imparation. You never heard the Joker say stupid lines like "The joke's on YOU! HAHAHAHAHA!!!" By the way, he had the worst line of the series: "First Gotham, and then, the WORLD!" That is something I'd expect from a child's sci-fi cartoon.

4. Bat gadgets. Just in case the city freezes I'd better build a BATSLED! Just in case I run across 2 frozen scientists I better take along a couple of BATTHERMALDEVICES! Just in case I get stuck in a Blues/Red Wings game I better install some BATSKATES!

5. Color. There was so much color I was expecting to see the MGM. Batman Returns also had ice and snow. Why wasn't it colorful? Oh yeah. Burton. Right.

6. The soundtrack. It doesn't fit. You can't take fast Dick Tracyesque music and put it into Batman and Robin. Especially if you ALLREADY USED IT! It fits in Forever, though.

7. The insanely inaccurate rocketship scene. Freeze had FRIGGIN METAL WINGS!! He'd just fall to his death FASTER!! Batman and Robin would have been struggling to breath at their altitude. And IF the skysurfing on metal doors could happen, Robin would have shattered his legs landing on the side of that building. WHY DIDN'T FREEZE JUST FREEZE BATMAN AS A WHOLE INSTEAD OF JUST HIS HANDS?!?!?!? The stpidity would have ceased at that point.

8. Comissioner Gordon. Since when did he become a 4-star general? The part where he pulled the heat lever to save himself and his unit was bad. It sure took a long time to freeze their lungs but they thawed *snap* like that! And why did Freeze have a heat switch anyway? Gordon as a horny old man was disturbing.

9. Batgirl. I find it ironic that they DIDN'T put nipples on her batsuit! As you already know, Batgirl was supposed to be Gordon's daughter, not Alfred's neice. She was awful. She didn't have an English accent, she had corny lines, she didn't looked fazed when she found out about Batman, and it is absolutely impossible to run in high-heels.

Finally 10. George Clooney. As Wayne he was OK, but as Batman? He didn't lower his voice, he sounded very assertive, and he ALWAYS MOVED HIS HEAD WHEN HE SAID SOMETHING!!! Watch the movie again, you'll see. And he had lines written by a rehsus monkey in a slave labor factory in Indonesia. That's my hypothesis. "Face it Freeze you've lost." "Hi Freeze. I'm Batman."

Only 2 things I really liked: Alfred's sympathetic role and the subtile showing of the Riddler's and Two-Face's costumes. Face's suit should have been torn, warped, and blood-stained after that fall.

This movie is perhaps the worst action movie of all time. Not the worst MOVIE. Home Alone 3 is.

Oh yeah, and Bane (was bad). So did those 2 scientists screaming and encouraging the Bat. "You are doing it Batman!" God please.

I know I'm probably going to get some flack for this, but I actually enjoyed this movie. It's kind of a guilty pleasure though because most people (including most of my friends) hated it. It is not my favorite BATMAN film by any means. I liked the darker Tim Burton movies the best, but I enjoyed this film simply for the eye candy it offers and for also Arnold Schwarzenegger. The movie is beautiful to look at (it was the most expensive BATMAN flick to date) and I although I'm not really a Schwarzenegger fan, I thought Arnold was very effective as Mr. Freeze, totally overshadowing George Clooney's portrayal of Batman and also Uma Thurman's Poison Ivy. (Did you ever notice Clooney's rather annoying acting style of tilting his head to one side while shaking it at the same time?)

Now the really bad news: Joel Schumacher (who also directed BATMAN FOREVER) was absolutely relentless with his flamboyant camp style in this chapter. BATMAN FOREVER hinted at the camp, but never took it to the extreme that this film does (think Superman II vs. Superman III). Some of the action sequences are really unbelievable (the embarrassing kind of unbelievable that is). There are also some very cheesy lines that could've been left out, particularly some of the Batgirl / Poison Ivy dialogue that's exchanged when they're fighting in Ivy's lair. Things are generally a little too bright in this movie which takes all of the mystery out of the "dynamic duo", making the film more of a live-action cartoon than a comic adaptation of the Dark Night. Of course, the constant change of actors playing the title role didn't help either (Clooney is currently the third actor to portray Batman in this series). This is why most people panned the movie, I guess.

So with all that said, hopefully this will be Schumacher's last turn as director. Supposedly there are two new BATMAN movies in the works right now. A live-action version of the animated series BATMAN: BEYOND (about the new Batman of the future-Terry McGinnis, under the guidance of a very senior Bruce Wayne) and in the opposite direction, BATMAN: YEAR ONE (about Batman's first year of crime fighting).