Popular reviews

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  Review by Patrick Willems ★★½ 15

  What used to be "THE WORST SUPERHERO MOVIE EVER" is now a weird relic from before the superhero movie boom. Time has been oddly kind to it. We've now seen so many gritty and/or grounded takes on these characters, so many serialized sequels and interconnected universes, that this feels special, even if it's not especially good.

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  Review by lee ★★ 19

  You either die The Dark Knight,
  Or live long enough to see yourself become Batman & Robin.

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 44

  *Was a 63, now an 88*

  MBGA: Make Batman Gay Again

  In regards to the vicious drubbing Batman and Robin has received since its release in 1997, I'm going to quote Richard Jenkins in Step Brothers by saying "I'm not buying that crap anymore!" What sort of mind-boggling gymnastics do you have to achieve to watch Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever follow-up and say: "oh, yeah, definitely an unintentionally terrible movie!"? Because this consistently 100%, cape and cowl, balls-out Slice of Camp operates as nothing less. If Burton functioned under notions of psychotic tendencies and heterosexual frustration in his two installments, Schumacher finger-paints freeing, fluid dynamics of dom/sub relationships and offers the most bare-bones use of a Batman love-interest as to…

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  Review by Logan Kenny ★★★★ 11

  nerds hate fun. glorious camp nonsense, batman is reduced to a glamour icon, with ripped muscles and nipples on his suit, a credit card in his own image and the mirage of celebrity that dominates both him and his counterpart bruce, the differences between them seem virtually non existent here, stars in a glorious disco wasteland. gotham is an extravaganza of late 90s fashion and opulence, a hideously garish overstylised hellhole populated with ice, ivy and roid filled mania, nothing fits here outside the extreme. the action sequences are smooth and crisp, arguably much better than nolan’s cluttered attempt at capturing realism in combat, you can give this movie shit for lots of things but at least it’s fluid and…

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  Review by adambolt ★★ 1

  LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE ON ICE

  -mr freeze to his dying wife

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  Review by Cole Duffy ★★★★ 4

  Heterosexuality ruined the superhero movie.

  Joel Schumacher knew exactly what he was doing. An openly gay man who adored camp, he pushed Batman to the absolute limits of camp in popcorn filmmaking. There was someone well-earned criticism, but the push back in 1997 was just too much for studio bosses at Warner Brothers to take."Push back" is a light term for the persistent screeching of nerds who whined about Bat nipples/ass, the over-the-top performances from everyone involved, and the refusal to be serious. They immediately declared it one of the worst films ever made and got the general public to go along with it.

  The thing is...Tim Burton had already set up this particular series of Batman films to go…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★ 1

  "Always winterize your pipes!"

  Completely bonkers. So tantalizingly gaudy and so jammed with non-sequitur, intentional camp, and bewildering performances that the amusingly garish BATMAN FOREVER seems aesthetically timid by comparison. Schumacher is using all 64 of his stupid crayons. And if there's a limit to my love for Schwarzenegger "cold" puns I haven't yet reached it.

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  Review by Patrick Willems 14

  There is a lot to like in this movie but I’m gonna be honest, I don’t think Akiva Goldsman brought his A-game to the screenplay

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  Review by Gonzo ★ 1

  ★★★★★

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  Review by Mark Kinsella ★★★★★ 17

  A spectacularly shite masterpiece. It's a particularly awful but oddly well made piece of filmmaking, the likes of which will probably never be seen again. A singular, strange, but facinating film by the late Joel Schumacher that will discussed and dissed for eons to come.

  Here are my favourite bits:

  1. Alicia Silverstone handles the dialogue like English is her third language.
  2. Uma Thurman having the sex appeal of Jimmy Saville visiting a children's hospital ward.
  3. Chris O'Donnell having the charisma of a toilet seat.
  4. George Clooney's leather nipples and ass. Actually, on further thought, that's hot.
  5. Bat bombs. Bat heaters. Bat ice-skates. Bat lasers. Batman fucking credit card!
  6. That awkward moment when you think…

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  Review by Sean Fennessey ★½ 16

  Batman & Robin is so lousy, it's amusing to think of it as the movie that changed Hollywood forever, the one that opened the door for X-Men, Spider-Man, and The Dark Knight. That it actually inspired creative executives—not visionaries like Raimi and Nolan—to care more about the quality of their franchise films, to never let them become the playgrounds of schlock-teurs again. This, in turn, resets the future of the business, expanding the scope and budget and international viability of American movies, jetstreaming "IP" to the forefront, reducing attention on the middle, effectively ending the reign of the Schwarzenegger-Stallone types as the key drivers of big-top mainstream box office. (Arnold is comically, epically bad-good in this.) And if that is the…

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  Review by Branson Reese 3

  This is the best of the 89-97 Batman run because it’s the stupidest, which means it’s the one that honors the source material the most.

  People flipped out over Batman having nipples in this one which, in retrospect is an insane line to draw in the sand. Do you not think that if Batman was real the deranged libertarian billionaire who cosplayed as him three times before falling off a building and dying WOULDN’T have visible nipples on his suit? Can you look me in the eyes and say that to me? You can’t. Hell, man, give Batman an enormous cod-piece. It’s what he wants.

  Ultimately all of the Batman movies are the same amount of realistic, which is 0%.…