Metacritic reviews

Joel Schumacher, director and ringmaster, piles on the flashy showmanship and keeps the film as big, bold, noisy and mindlessly overwhelming as possible.

There's something almost maniacally heroic about packaging the fourth sequel of a superhero action series without resorting to the old standbys of good writing, capable acting or inspired directing.

Batman & Robin, like the first three films in the series, is wonderful to look at, and has nothing authentic at its core.

This film, which places yet another actor in the batsuit, has all the necessary hallmarks of a sorry sequel -- pointless, plodding plotting; asinine action; clueless, comatose characterization; and dumb dialogue.

It's the lightest of the Batman movies, the most cartoony, the dumbest and the least ambitious. But it holds the audience's attention, brings on a few laughs and never really gets boring.

There's so much happening in the movie that it feels like nothing is happening at all. Which leaves you free to gaze, slack-jawed, on the true glory of Batman & Robin -- its fabulously color-coded set design.

Clooney's stiff cornball delivery and tendency to smile during the most tragic moments bring this as close to the cartoonish Batman television series of the 1960s as any of the movies have come.

Batman & Robin fails to engage the spirit of Batman, Robin, or decent marketing in general, and instead ends up as a limp, excruciatingly shallow knockoff that leaves viewers cringing at the unavoidable one-liners that make up the better part of the script.

Clooney fails to make much of an impression as The Batman, but to make an impression amongst all the garish theatrics, he would pretty much have to shout his dialogue in rhyming verse, backwards.

Campy costumes can't disguise the incoherent plot, confused performances and lame script that send this star vehicle spiralling downward.