The Schumacher Hypothesis
I staggered out of a showing
of Batman & Robin into Times Square. The world looked evil and sad.
The sun was sinking out of sight at the end of 43 rd Street, where
signs no longer read "43 rd Street" but instead "43 rd
Street: Adolph S. Ochs Street," in tongue-twisting homage to the patriarch of
the New York Times . Five or six neon-striped storefronts seem to have
sprouted in the past five or six days. The Disney Complex now has a Hercules
Store, not to mention a Hercules complex. Billboards high above 42 nd
Street advertise Amsterdam Beer; fake movie marquees draw attention to them
with chortling messages like "Don't Look Up." Those fake marquees first
appeared during the filming of the Arnold Schwarzenegger bomb Last Action
Hero . Afterward they bore pseudo-provocative art-slogan messages of the
Jenny Holzer variety. So we're looking at fake ads parodying fake slogans
parodying fake movie titles. I wish Schwarzenegger would come back now and blow
everything up again. I went into McDonald's, hoping to find solace in an order
of Super-Size Fries. They were stale. Where can you go these days for decent
trash?
When I
say that Batman & Robin is a punishing ordeal, I want you to know
where I'm coming from. I have an appetite for Hollywood blockbusters of the
sort that some literate people consider big and dumb. I thought the first
Warner Bros. Batman , Tim Burton's pulp opera, had genius in it. It
invented a huge movie world in which the eyes could go dreaming. It also had
the wit to set a menacing hero against a merrymaking villain--the line between
good and evil grew scribbly. The last Batman , Joel Schumacher's
Batman Forever , was nowhere near as cool, but it was clean, campy fun
from beginning to end, and it rode high on a maliciously daft Jim Carrey
performance. I was also lucky to see Batman Forever in more pleasant
surroundings than the New Times Square--in a high-modern movie palace in
Helsinki, with an audience of hip Finns who giggled at subtitles that seemed to
go their own way from the script. (At one point, the Finnish text made some
kind of joke about Chevy Chase. No one was saying "Chevy Chase" on-screen, or
possibly could have been.)
Now Schumacher is not a talentless filmmaker. Indeed, a
sophistical argument could be made that his films, while meretricious, are
always at least mildly entertaining. If your next dinner party threatens to
turn dull, you might try antagonizing sophisticates with a Revisionist
Schumacher Hypothesis. St. Elmo's Fire ? An unflinching descent into the
shallowness of the Brat Pack, notable for the discovery of the brooding
dramatic craft of Demi Moore. The Lost Boys ? An innocently homoerotic
vampire spoof, notable for the discovery of the brooding dramatic craft of
Jason Patric. Flatliners and Dying Young ? Best passed over in
silence. Julia Roberts is found not to be a tragedian. ( Dying Young was
really notable as the first big whoosh of air out of the balloon of Roberts'
megastardom.) Falling Down ? A descent into white-male, white-collar
vigilante fantasies. The Grisham diptych, The Client and A Time to
Kill ? Bad movies done in style. Schumacher is once again the maestro of the
8 by10s, unveiling the teen idol Brad Renfro and twentysomething dreamboat
Matthew McConaughey.
"But this
Schumacher is a pompous idiot," your dinner guests sputter. "He once said on
The
Charlie Rose
Show that he made 'commercial' pictures
like Batman so he could afford 'idea' pictures like A Time to
Kill !?!" All too true. But let's at least admit his flair for trash. At his
best he offers an empty but internally consistent flamboyance. He is skilled at
evoking places: Falling Down captured with precision what Los Angeles
looks like on a vicious summer day. He is also good with faces, particularly
male faces. This is not to make assumptions about the man's sexuality--he might
just happen to be as gifted a director of slow-witted male models as, say,
George Cukor was of fast-witted female actors. I enjoy this aspect of
Schumacher's work, although I wonder, in the case of A Time to Kill ,
whether he worried about McConaughey's inability to enunciate or to assume
different facial expressions. The acting is not always an embarrassment; in
Falling Down , the one Schumacher film that threatened to be decent,
Michael Douglas delivered one of the creepiest slow burns of the decade.
Batman & Robin quashes the Schumacher
Hypothesis for the time being. (I will have to return to my old contrarian
standby, the Unsung Greatness of Oliver Stone.) It has none of the minor
virtues of Schumacher's other films. It looks bad: cluttered surfaces,
production design reminiscent of overblown Broadway musicals, editing too fast
for the eye to catch up, poor staging of fast action. The first few minutes are
particularly trying--direction seems to have been handed over to a fractious
committee of prepubescent speed freaks. And while this kind of movie doesn't
cry out for a coherent plot, it does need surprises. Most of Batman &
Robin 's clichés were parodied in advance by Austin Powers . (When
Commissioner Gordon shows up on a TV monitor warning that Mr. Freeze has taken
over Gotham Museum, Austin fans will think fondly of the plot-spewing
monologues of Basil Exposition.) The smirky George Clooney has no screen
charisma. Chris O'Donnell's strutting, crew-cut Robin is a superfluous second
superhero, indistinct from the first. Uma Thurman tries to interject some
vampish style as Poison Ivy, but the inanity of her character--environmentalist
turned plant woman?--has the audience snickering against her. Alicia
Silverstone, as a computer whiz turned Batgirl, purses her lips
uncertainly.
With so
much wrong on every front, it's hard to single out a basic flaw. But
Schwarzenegger has to take the blame for providing no immoral center to the
Batman world. Each of the previous Batman films had a sly, spry
villainous turn, with Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, and Jim Carrey dancing
through their roles. Schwarzenegger slowly and methodically munches his way
through reams of cardboard zingers. "Winter has come!" "Everyone chill!" "The
Iceman cometh!" etc. He's Mr. Freeze , see? Arnold has regressed to his
ultraprimitive Conan the Barbarian manner, except that, in this case,
not even his big frame adds much to a waddling-icicle role.
One of the movie's few redeeming features is partially
wiped out by one of its worst excesses. Elliot Goldenthal, the best film
composer now working, has written typically imaginative music, rich in jagged
harmony and deft scoring. That eerie wailing at the end of the title theme is a
team of trilling horns. Schumacher's regard for this composer--he used him also
in A Time to Kill --is one sign of latent tastefulness. In movies like
Interview With the Vampire and Heat , Goldenthal returned the
obsolescent Hollywood orchestra to some of its old glory. But in the new
Batman , the score was apparently deemed insufficient. It's repeatedly
blotted out by the sound effects that erupt in tandem with every move or twitch
on-screen. One whip of a cape sounds like a rocket blasting off. An actual
rocket blasting off--yes, at one point Mr. Freeze escapes in a rocket, just
like Dr. Evil in Austin Powers --sounds like a dentist going to work on
your ear. This indiscriminate racket, more than anything, sent me out into
Times Square with the feeling of having been roughed up. The area hasn't
changed so much after all.
Chill out: Mr. Freeze
(Schwarzenegger) and Robin (O'Donnell) (15 seconds) :
Batspat: Batgirl
(Silverstone) vs. Poison Ivy (Thurman) (24 seconds) :
