The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Let's start off on the right foot.  I am not a huge fan of the Batman films.  I did absolutely adore the TV series in the 1960's, but I was 7 then.  They would not hold my adult self's attention, that I know.  But my serious quibble with the modern Batman films is that he is played as turgid rather than restrained.  If that is the role, the Christian Bale is the man for the job.  Nobody does wooden the way he does (he really surprised me in 'The Fighter', and I would love to see more of that Christian Bale, but this guy?  Not so much).  So, since I have the approach to movies that can best be summed up as 'if you can't say something good, don't say much of anything at all', why am I writing this?

In a word, Catwoman.   Anne Hathaway owns the role after uttering a single “Ooops.” It’s an “Ooops” dripping in sexiness and insincerity, coming as it does after Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne interrupts her in the middle of a heist and before she dons her leather or rubber or vinyl or whatever-it-is catsuit. The “Ooops” and its Jean Harlow naughty-girl reading come early in the film and the rest of Hathaway’s performance seems to flow from it. She’s flip, she’s funny, and she looks great astride the bat motorcycle--like she at one with the machine. She kicks credible ass, and she doesn’t overdo the cat business. She’s just right. She’s also the one bit of effervescence in a film that’s otherwise so turgid it would be unendurable—one reviewer used the term 'Wagnerian bloat' and I think that captures it.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt auditioning for the role of a kinder gentler Robin causes some decrease in the over-the-top nature of the story.


The Dark Knight Rises is as exhausting as it is entertaining.  Clocking in at 2 hours and 45 minutes, you need to start the evening early if you are going to get through it in one sitting.  The bad guys are really bad, and the story of turning the prison over to the inmates has the predictable outcome--but the movie does keep a sort of cartoon-like feel throughout.