I really didn’t, but I will.

“Would you like to be the one to declare Heath Ledger’s last movie crap? Especially with the whole Oscar-thing going on?” were the words Housemate had used to get her boyfriend to wait a little while to see what the reviews for “the Dark knight” would be. She was telling me this last Saturday while we were walking into the theatre to watch this very same movie.

And well, no, I would in fact not like to be the one to do so, even though I am traditionally not so afraid of my opinions differing from the norm. Not that her boyfriend is a sheep, far form it, but traditionally he is a little less (intentionally) rattling than I.
That being said, I’ll stand out on that most precocious of ledges and declare my heartfelt opininon: It sucks.

It does, it really does. I am sorry but it does. Yes, I will admit that Heath Ledger has his character down pat, and his mannerisms and stance convey a deep, deep creepiness that gives a person goose bumps. Facially, there is no creepiness. Yes his tongue moves freakily, and yes he looks freaky, but the look is mostly make-up. Well done make up, but to rely on make-up doing the trick for up-close acting is, in my opinion, a tad sad. Getting an Oscar for doing so is an insult. Completely different topic.

Saying that Heath out-acts the movie is not a stretch, he does. Then again, this is like saying that carrots are better at being carrots than potatoes.
Heath might not have been a tremendous actor, I feel he died too young for objectivity to decide, but the other actors in this movie “perform” with such a lackluster disregard to what they are trying to accomplish that if this performance is what gets the boy his posthumous Oscar I am going to submit to the academy the video of my own personal elementary school Christmas musical, as my own Oscar can’t possibly be far behind. After all, clearly all one has to do is do slightly better than a rasping, awkward and uncharismatic Christian Bale, and I think I reached that level of acting well before my voice changed.

“Batman: the Dark Knight” could have done better. There is a list of actors that have proven themselves in a great many movies previously, the Batman-series as a concept easily lends itself to a deeper-than-average interpretation, allowing for a nicely layered view of the superhero-genre, and there are many perspectives to the series that have not yet been wasted by earlier camptastic installments.
However, it does not do better. Sure, Michael Caine is charming as always, and Maggie Gyllenhaal does well enough, apart from the strange moment of bursting into song, but the rest of the cast, from Aaron Eckhart to Gary Oldman, phone in their performance, sadly resulting in an impossibility to really feel for any of the characters anything but a slight, but noticeable, aversion.

The movie, at first glance, doesn’t do much wrong. It is a little bit predictable (par for the Batman-course), and it is a little bit boring in it’s set up (again par) but really it shows some snide disrespect for previous movements. A joke at the expense of Tim Burton’s thematically and stylistically far better “Batman” really set of a chain of “too bad they went this way” moments. Even tacking the piss out of the original series is a bit sad, one would hope a movie that is flaunted and hyped like this one deserves to be treated so on it’s own merits, and not just because it can make fun of other movies so they look bad. This is a block-buster movie, NOT the lead-cheerleader in high school that only rules because she can put down those less fortunate.

All in all, the movie lacks the entertainment value, plot and refinement (it has Eric Roberts for goodness’ sake) to be good, and it lacks the ability to laugh at itself to be so bad it becomes funny. It was just boring, sad, and a little bit insulting (as it can apparently laugh at everything else quite easily).

As a comparison, Housemate and I watched “Catwoman” the next day, and found it almost refreshingly entertaining. And that movie also sucked. If a movie can’t easily outshine a bad spin-off of it’s original concept, maybe that’s a sign that the movie should be taken out back and shot.

A disappointed,

Kevin