It Was a Dark (And Stormy?) Knight

OK, so I was apparently the only person who liked my Mr. Movie Person Dave Barry homage, so I'll consign it to the past.

It could also be that no one really cared that much about the opinions Mr. Movie Person expressed, but if people who wrote blogs stopped writing unless people cared about their opinions, we would have maybe four blogs total in the whole world.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm leaving out any real spoilers, but I may still cross the line the way some people see it. If you're a nervous type about that sort of stuff, by all means wait until after seeing The Dark Knight before reading this.

I'm not as negative as the man at the urinal next to me who flipped open his cell phone and in the midst of the Flushing Chorus told his friend, "It sucked. (Whoosh!) But at least now I know." But I was disappointed. On the one hand, the Second Coming couldn't live up to this level of hype (I thought the Last Trump went a little flat, didn't you? No breath control). On the other, even if I spot the movie a few points to make up for the mandatory over-marketing, I still walked out with a shrug and a "meh."

The Dark Knight isn't bad -- too many talented people involved, all working pretty hard at stuff they're good at. But it did meader murkily for more than two-and-a-half hours, creaking under the weight of multiple plotlines and digressions to make Important Philosophical Points. It featured some pretty neat action set pieces as well as some of the blitzkireg-cut fight scenes that directors have been in love with recently. It needs some serious cleaning up, in other words.

The late Heath Ledger makes a fine Joker, although people who talk about giving him an Oscar for this should probably have their own heads examined. He's in no way as cartoonish as Jack Nicholson in Batman, but Christopher Nolan lives and works in the real world a lot more often than Tim Burton does. Christian Bale is also good, drawing the line between his Bruce Wayne and his Batman down to every detail, including vastly different voices for each set of lines.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is head and shoulders above Katie Holmes. Her character of Rachel Dawes has to carry some heavy dramatic weight in the movie that Holmes could never have pulled off. It's kind of a shame that those scenes and Gyllenhaal's greater talents are used in service of what amounts to little more than the same kind of girlfriend-in-jeopardy role that can be seen in any Fall Guy rerun. Aaron Eckhart takes on the role of Harvey Dent and -- well, it's hard to see why. Dent may be supposed to be some kind of mirror to Batman, or something, but we've turned around in so many circles with him that by the time he reaches the place where all good Batman fans know Harvey Dent is headed, he's a tacked-on afterthought with another character's monologue shoe-horned into his scenes to try to give him some structure.

As long as 1997's Batman and Robin exists, it will be impossible for anyone else to make a "worst Batman movie." And The Dark Knight is nowhere near the mess Tim Burton made in 1992's Batman Returns, his second Batman film. But it doesn't really deliver on the promise of Nolan's 2005 Batman Begins, and it leaves hopes for a quality third movie (if one is made) relying more on crossed fingers, knocked wood and rubbed rabbit's feet than one might wish.