Sex Appeal Big Part Of New Batman Movie

All the innuendo. All those muscular statues. All that nippled rubber.

Let’s face it. From Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman whip to Uma Thurman’s sprayed-on Poison Ivy outfits, the Batman movies are more than a little bit fetishistic.

“Oh, I hadn’t noticed,” “Batman & Robin” director Joel Schumacher says, feigning innocence but trying to fool nobody. “I’ve taken it to madness, haven’t I?”

Well, yeah. “B&R” opens with loving close-ups of George Clooney and Chris O’Donnell pulling components of their Vac-U-Form action suits onto assorted choice body parts (for the boys, Alicia Silverstone repeats the process later when she first becomes Batgirl).

Once willowy Uma Thurman morphs into Poison Ivy, her come-ons and costumes alike grow increasingly outrageous.

“Batman is sexy,” Schumacher states with no doubt. “And I think we have some of the most beautiful people in the world in this movie, enhanced to a kind of comic-book state of the art. The tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top eroticism is part of the fun of the piece. If we didn’t have that, it would lose its adult appeal.”