Batman and Robin

You may have heard of this movie. It was on TNT tonight. Having noticed a definite downhill trend in the three Batman movies that preceded it, and having heard claims that this movie was responsible for the lack of any live-action Batman movies for eight years or so, I decided to see just how bad it could be. It lived up to its reputation quite well, I must say. It is not the worst movie I have ever seen, but it may be worst with a $140 million budget. That's a lot of money.

I chronicled my reactions to the movie as it unfolded, in case anyone is interested:

• Batsignal! Drama! Action! Go! What? Exposition? No, we'll get to that later. Also, the batsuit has nipples now.
• Oh, dear, Arnold's one-liners are even worse than expected.
• Is he every going to get any dialogue other than one-liners?
• Evil hockey-playing henchmen? What?
• A giant missile that's going to destroy the city? Isn't it a little early in the movie to pull that out? How can they possibly make the subsequent action sequences any more dire?
• How long is this action sequence going to go on for? I can tolerate it when James Bond movies drag the opening on for a long time, because they've been doing it for decades, and because James Bond really needs no introduction. More importantly, though, the opening to a James Bond movie is usually only semi-relevant to the rest of the story, and therefore can be regarded as the equivalent of an opening cartoon or something. I highly doubt Mr. Freeze is going to die here so Batman can spend the rest of the movie chasing after one of his henchmen.
• Aaaaand now they're surfing. They are surfing on the air. I am not okay with this.
• Arnold sounds really bored. He's rushing through most of his lines. Either he was directed to sound like he didn't want to be in the movie, or he really wanted to get out of there. And his last movie before this was Jingle All the Way.
• EMOTE, UMA! EMOTE! YOU'RE NOT EMOTING HARD ENOUGH!
• I understand that comic books are basically pulp, but it always frustrates me when someone yells, "Science!" and then someone else sprouts gigantic muscles. Hasn't anyone heard of conservation of mass?
• I hope there's a commercial break coming up soon, because I have to pee, and I need a respite from this.
• So, the venom gave Dr. Isley a British accent? No, now she's doing Mae West schtick. I'm not comfortable with this. Also, I never really cared for Mae West schtick.
• SNOW MISER! :D
• This scene needs more boobs. Who can we get to wear this ridiculous costime? Vivica Fox said she'd do it? Yeah, she'll do.
• Okay, I guess Arnold does get to do something other than spout one-liners. He also gets to provide plot summaries.
• I think there might be something wrong with Alicia Silverstone's face. Or she could have been directed to look like that. I'm only about half an hour into the movie and I'll already believe anything.
• Wait, where did Poison Ivy's accent go? Okay, good, back to Mae West.
• I... what? Stripping purple gorilla? Those words don't belong together.
• Should we be able to see her pheromones? Is that how it works?
• Did Uma Thurman just look directly at the camera while she was talking? Unacceptable. This is a terribly-directed scene, though, so maybe I shouldn't blame her.
• "Fahve hundred thawsand dollahs!"
• No. No. Credit card jokes are not cool. Why didn't anyone I know ever make fun of this scene before I watched it, so I could be mentally prepared? I wish I could unsee that.
• I looked away to type something, and now people are driving cars off of a giant hand for no apparent reason. Interesting.
• "It's Batman and Robin, not Robin and Batman, and I'm sick of it!" Is there a way I can turn "cringe" into a three- or four-syllable word, so that I have more opportunities to enunciate my distaste?
• Look! Love interest! Surprise! Aren't you surprised? Why aren't you surprised?
• Those are some effective guards they've got there.
• Enhance!
• Why is there an underground bike racing scene in a Batman movie?
• I'm watching a commercial, and there are people dancing around and singing some obviously autotuned and dubbed-on song about I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. I can't get any breaks at all.
• Why did he need to turn the tap on to freeze the pipes? Couldn't he just freeze them directly? Or is that not how his freeze powers work?
• "Bad? Yes. Guy? No." And someone got paid for this script.
• Clooney doesn't sound much happier to be here than Schwarzenegger.
• The Batman character protrayed here reminds of the Batman character from the 1943 serial, which is to say that he spends most of his time looking oblivious to what's going on around him and/or getting beat up.
• It seems like having the entire world covered in ice would be directly contradictory to Poison Ivy's objectives.
• I wonder how many people actually use their own first name as a password. I also wonder how many people actually would expect other people to use their own first name as a password.
• Why do the effects of Poison Ivy's pheremone thing last for so unbelievably long?
• Why does that CD with videos of batmobile schematics even exist?
• Why is this still on?
• I watched a barely-known, no-budget martial arts movie called Ninja Vengeance last night. The actors in that tried harder than in this movie. I still wonder if that was due to direction, though, or if they all realized that they were contractually obligated to trudge through a pile of garbage and they wanted to expend as little energy doing so as possible.
• I think I saw the poison lips/rubber libs thing in an episode of Get Smart.
• The big finale here is a lot less impactful than the opening. I knew jumping up and yelling, "ACTION!" that early in the movie would be a problem.
• It seems like every 20 mintues, I look up and someone's falling hundreds of feet. It's getting old.
• I think the exact same shot of looking down at a wall of snow was used for both Batman's fall and Robin's fall. That's not good.
• Has Vivica Fox done anything since I first complained about her not doing much of anything in this movie?
• I would think that if everyone in Gotham was suddenly flash-frozen, they would have suffered a lot more damage than is portrayed in this movie. Also, if there was ice over everything in the city, why didn't its melting create a gigantic tidal wave? Batman really dropped the ball letting that doomsday weapon go off in the first place.
• It seems like it would have been safer to put Mr. Freeze in a freezer than to give him is super-powered suit back. Given how effective the guards in the last freezer were, though, maybe it doesn't matter.
• Shut up, Alicia Silverstone. Nobody wants to hear your bravado.
• In the final scene of this movie, Batman, Robin, and Batgirl all run toward the camera, with the Bat-Signal providing illumination behind them. Imagine if this series of films had continued rather than being replaced by Batman Begins, and extrapolate. Batman 7: introducing three Bat-Dogs, an actual Bat, and, somehow, a Hippo.

Also, I partially broke my (Ikea) couch while using it as a step so I could put a lamp (from Ikea) together. It seems that the serpentine spring on which my weight was concentrated was held onto the frame with a 1/4"-thick plastic clip, and that the clip snapped in half when my weight was concentrated on it. I am rather miffed about it, but it is somewhat tempered by the fact that I probably shouldn't have been standing on the couch in the first place, and that I got the couch for free when one of my old neighbors moved out anyway. :|