Batman gets AdamWested.
Schwarzenegger is Mr. Freeze (a villian getting top billing over the hero and titlesake, that doesn't bode well) while Thurman is Poison Ivy, the eco-terrorist. Clooney dons the batcowl this time. Chris O'Donnell repeats as Robin. A remarkably pudgy Alicia Silverstone is Batgirl.
Freeze is bent on freezing the world since he's PO'ed at his probs. Ivy wants to strangle the world with plants. The heroes have to stop these dastardly deeds.
If one were to make a batflick by ignoring the comic books--the canon of the characters. And base the movie upon all they knew, which is basically the previous movies and especially the campy 60s series, you would have Batman & Robin.
That is not a compliment.
Take one of those campy episodes, juice them up with $150M in F/X, sets, and star salaries, and you get this travesty. All the sets are over the top. All action is preceded and followed by all sorts of fireworks (just what could be exploding?). All dialogue has to have some alleged wittiness to it which falls flat.
The movie is just too full. There was no need for Batgirl. They should have ditched Mr. Freeze and had Ah-nuld play Bane, who in this movie has been reduced to being nothing more than Ivy's bodyguard. (In the comics, Bane is the one character to truly kick Batman's ass by literally breaking his back.) Viveca Fox is reduced to two lines as she preens about in her monumentally silly outfit. One of those pretentious, one-word-only-for-a-name models, is Freeze's wife and gets to "act" by holding her breath in a tank of water. (That sequence is an homage to the Mr. Freeze cartoon from the Batman & Robin Adventures series.)
Give them credit for staying true to comic book canon regarding Bane's and Ivy's costumes. They are dead-on. Freeze looks like a gay Robocop/Tin Woodman on his way to the disco. Robin's outfit is vaguely like Nightwing, which is the character that Dick Grayson has grown up and become in the comics. The Batgirl costume is Hollywood fiction. Clooney's second Batoutfit is utterly bizarre. The first one at least echoes the Dark Knight look before they put the yellow oval on his chest.
The story is lots of wacky action that leaves a lot to be desired. It was amazing that a person could watch so much stuff taking place on the screen and be so inured to it. All the unnecessary explosions, the purple and red lighting, the near plotless story; it all falls deader than Schwarzenegger's acting.
And amazingly, if they wanted to do it right, all they'd have to do would be pick up a few Batman graphic novels and use them for inspiration. Books like: Batman: Year One, The Dark Knight Returns, and especially The Killing Joke are stories on how Bruce Wayne deals with the crazed world he is part of as his other half; not just an expensive tired repeat of an Adam West episode. The movie is lame-plus. If there is a fifth movie, let us hope for a script and a director who can do this American icon justice.
Movie's suitability for: