For a long time, Joel Schummacher’s Batman & Robin movie has held the record as quite possibly the worst live-action Batman movie ever. It wasn’t exactly a mystery as to why that is. But the movie’s Poison Ivy actress, Uma Thurman, has shed some light recently on the matter. She claims that Batman & Robin was made for children. This somehow explains the movie’s identity crisis because it’s also marked as a PG-13 movie.
Uma Thurman was invited to Kelly Clarkson’s talk show back on October 21, 2024. There, she discussed her Poison Ivy role back in 1997’s Batman & Robin. Halloween was fast approaching, after all, and talks about Halloween costumes were inevitable.
Surprisingly enough, Uma Thurman had positive stuff to say about Batman & Robin. “My kids are obsessed with Batman & Robin. They love Poison Ivy. It’s the one that was actually made for children,” according to Uma Thurman.
It’s not clear whether Thurman meant that Batman & Robin was for kids because it’s a superhero movie or if it had a previously lower age rating but was forced to adopt a PG-13 because of mature themes. Batman & Robin notably had a lot of sexual innuendos particularly those made with Poison Ivy’s character in mind.
Moreover, themes of global warming and lots of violent action sequences were present in the film. At the same time, Batman & Robin also squeezed in some 1960s campiness and silly jokes that appear to have been made for children.
But even though Thurman’s kids loved the movie and had some praise for it, not all her co-stars in Batman & Robin share the same sentiment. George Clooney who played Batman/Bruce Wayne in the film admitted that Batman & Robin “sucks.” He even joked that it ruined any prospect of further superhero movies for him.
