06/20/97
MOVIE REVIEW: Batman & Robin
'Batman & Robin' equals fun

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

**** (out of five)
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, Chris O'Donnell, Uma Thurman, Alicia Silverstone, Michael Gough, Pat Hingle, Elle Macpherson. A Warner Bros. picture written by Akiva Goldsman from the characters created by Bob Kane, directed by Joel Schumacher. Rated PG-13, contains violence. Running time: 130 minutes.

Played at warp speed and with no jokey cliche left unsaid, Batman & Robin is a smashing entry into the venerable series.

George Clooney makes a kinder, gentler new Batman, to the point of playing second banana to villains Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's billed above the title characters as Mr. Freeze, and Uma Thurman as the show-stealing Poison Ivy. The mood is more lighthearted than it has been in the past three films, with the mayhem choreographed as much for laughs as for sheer action, though there's still plenty of that. But it's definitely more entertaining, too.

The Batman films are known as much for their villains as they are for the superheroes. And Schwarzenegger, covered in silver paint (including his bald dome) and wearing a lumberingly unwieldy costume, manages to roll off goofy lines -- "You're not sending me to the cooler" -- without letting us forget that he has a heart in that refrigerated costume.

Mr. Freeze is a victim of a cryogenic accident that occurred while he was trying to come up with a cure for the ailment that has left his pretty wife frozen in a tank of coolant. Driven mad with grief and anger, he is about to take out his frustration on Gotham City, stealing the big diamonds he needs to keep his schemes afloat and plotting to use his freeze ray on the entire city, when his plans go awry.

Thurman's deliciously sexy Poison Ivy is a former botanist who had hoped her experiments would somehow combine plants and animals in a new superspecies invulnerable to the threat of man. Unfortunately, something has gone terribly wrong and she is now a plant creature herself, with venomous, but very kissable, lips that render her victims quite dead.

If Schwarzenegger lumbers within a heavy suit, Thurman slithers and slinks and coos and steals every scene she's in, prompting Batman to ponder, "Why are all the gorgeous ones homicidal maniacs?" Robin hopes that she has "turned over a new leaf."

Thurman's upstaging is not necessarily good news for Clooney, who is stalwart but also engaging and easygoing as Batman. There's no sense of the past terrors -- the murders of his parents -- which have driven him to take on the Batman persona. Yet how often can the series carp on that gloomy setup? Not when you can get Batman and Robin paraphernalia at the Burger King.

On the other hand, Clooney makes a lovely connection with Michael Gough as the suddenly desperately ill Alfred, Batman's longtime servant and confidant. Alfred's gloomy forecasts of his impending death are enough to bring Batman & Robin down to earth and give it a sentimentally touching ring.

O'Donnell is whiny as Robin, who's trying to overcome an Oedipal complex. "I want a car!" he carps at Batman in his first line, and he's forever complaining about how the caped crusader tries to keep all the glory -- and all the women -- for himself. He's there in a pinch, but just as often gets himself into some disastrous trouble that calls for a rescue.

Batman & Robin also introduces a third character to the pantheon: Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl, the English niece (with no trace of an English accent) of Alfred. Silverstone is, at best, serviceable, though she shows pluck in sequences where she races a punk motorcycle gang and later "joins the family" by putting on the Batgirl costume and getting involved in death-defying business involving tremendous heights.

Joel Schumacher, who directed the last Batman outing, is at the helm again, but with even more emphasis on action and speed. The plot careens from a wildly inventive opening sequence -- a theft at the Gotham Art Museum with Mr. Freeze's henchmen on skates using a laughably enormous diamond as a hockey puck -- to its shuddering finale, with the Bat group trying furiously to thaw out a frozen Gotham City while Mr. Freeze does everything to stop them. Batman, Robin and Batgirl perform some incredible mile-high stunts while a huge telescope swings wildly and threatens to send them plummeting to the ground.

Batman & Robin moves so fast that there's hardly time to catch your breath or to notice that a lot of it (all of it?) -- like the heroes sky-surfing after jumping from a rocket in the stratosphere -- makes little sense.

Hey, it looks great, and in a movie based on a comic-book series, who cares?