I waited as long as I could.
While most of America was going ga-ga over this latest new installment of Batman on the big screen, I held back to led the hordes of unmannered slobs see this first. It's the kind of water cooler movie that not only commands your attendance, but also invites all those idiots who see it several times over while texting with their friends throughout the film. "The Dark Knight" got rave reviews from critics and moviegoers alike. I have friends who chided me for not seeing it sooner. One chum never goes to the movies and he saw it two times. So, this has to be something really special, right?
Wrong. Dead, dead, dead wrong.
Last Saturday night, I walked out of the Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood and I was convinced that I had missed Thanksgiving dinner. I was dazed, confused, tired, and sorry that I had spent what seemed to be four months in the theater. I'm not quite sure what the hell everybody else is talking about. For me, "The Dark Knight" was a complete mess.
Essentially, the movie is nothing more than an almost three hour video game. Car crashes, explosions, fires, then more car crashes, more explosions, and more fires. Lots of people getting killed. Besides Warner Brothers, the only people getting really rich here are probably the Gotham City undertakers. And who knew that this was such a rotten place to live? Rampant with unchecked thugs and crime, it makes my decimated hometown of Mount Vernon, New York look like a quiet Italian villa on the Mediterranean. Maybe people are moving there for the weather. It certainly seems pretty much devoid of any culture or law enforcement.
So, a bunch of criminals are running around and Batman is being chastised for letting it go on too long. Or maybe he was on a Club Med cruise. I'm not quite sure, because the plot points are all hidden behind darkness and special effects. You can't tell where you are at any given moment and the script seems to have been written on an Etch-A-Sketch. At some point, the device gets a shake and you have to start all over again. There's a great example of super sloppy screen writing here. In any given action movie, there are maybe two or three times where certain death is to happen and suddenly, out of nowhere, the hero appears to save the day. Well, that works maybe two or three times a movie. But, "The Dark Knight" repeats this over and over and over and over and over. I actually mentioned this shoddy device to my pastor on the following Sunday morning. How the heck can Batman keep showing up like that every single time? My pastor, who has at least one screw loose on her very best days, replied, "Well, he is Batman." Thank God I have no children for her to confirm. Her reply made no sense, but, then again, nothing about "The Dark Knight" ever did.
The acting was awful as well. Christian Bale, as the Caped Crusader, channels Clint Eastwood whenever he speaks and reminded me of Dirty Harry out trick-or-treating. Aaron Eckhart, who is incredibly overrated anyway, made the most implausible choices as the DA who uses gasoline as a skin emulsifier so he can essentially play half of the movie with his face falling off and looking like Joan Van Ark after a bad chemical peel.
Of course, much has already been made of the late Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. Yes, the film is a little bit more interesting when he is on camera. But, they're already talking about a posthumous Oscar and I wouldn't do that engraving just yet. Indeed, his role is not a stretch. Most actors will tell you that the easiest thing to play is crazy. So, Ledger really does nothing special here and all the critical kudos are not because he's good, but because he's dead.
The dark and sinister layers of this movie also trouble me. There's not a single character in the film that you can even remotely like. But, apparently, that is the trend. You can't even root for superheroes anymore. Before it started, there was a trailer for the next James Bond episode featuring Daniel Craig. Even 007 is now one of these overly shaded characters with an incredibly evil underbelly. What happened to the fun? What happened to the tongue-in-cheek humor? Where is there any enjoyment in any of this? If you spend four plus days seeing a movie, the least you can expect is the opportunity to smile once.
Trust me. Nobody enjoys a popcorn action movie more than me. And I really only have to flashback a few months to "Iron Man," which was a terrific fun flick with a great performance by Robert Downey Jr., who clearly understood that he was up on that screen to entertain the masses. It was also 100 times better than the overwrought and fatally bloated "Dark Knight."
As I crawled out of the Arclight in a stupor, I thought maybe it was me. Perhaps I have now outgrown mass entertainment. But, my compatriots felt the same way. And, on the way to the parking lot, my peripheral hearing caught similar comments from the people around me. Everybody seemed to be wondering what all the hoopla has been all about.
I guess it's all about the evolution of the world around us. For the past few years, I've come to realize that both critics and the mass audience have increasingly become unable to differentiate between champagne and beer. Now, we've moved to a different level. With "The Dark Knight," they can no longer tell the difference between Godiva chocolate and dog shit.
Dinner last night: Garden medley salad at BJs.
1 comment:
Heath Ledger's death both helped the movie's box office and shifted expectations toward Ledger, making him a more important element of the film than he was intended to be. There are way too many characters and big name actors playing them. It's an overcrowded movie, and the script is one big mess. I checked out of the film about half an hour in but there was lots more to sit through. It's the biggest money maker of the year and the biggest disappointment.
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