I usually only look forward to 2 or 3 movies a year.  The Dark Knight would be one of those 2 or 3 for 2008…so much so that I decide to join a friend at midnight for the first showing of it in a local IMAX theater.  I haven’t been to a midnight movie since college so it kinda felt like a fish out of water experience.  It was me, my friend, and a whole bunch of cute college girls and their dorky boyfriends…you know, people who don’t have to get up at 6:45am to go to work the next day like me.  Onto the movie…

This is one of the rare occasions where the movie lives up to the hype.  Few dull scenes, few illogical decisions, few bad characters and few appearances of bad acting.  Every Heath Ledger scene was phenomenal, especially the “magic pencil” trick…that was pretty funny.  Solid performances by Bale and Eckhart.  Watching some of the action scenes on an IMAX screen was a little difficult b/c it was hard to see what was going on.  I couldn’t tell who was who and what the hell Batman was trying to do.

The good: great characters, none of the cheesiness of the Joel Schumacher era, great action scenes and great make up…Eckhart was pretty grisly for a portion of the movie.

The bad: Not sure if the Harvey Dent angle was necessary due to the limited screen time he had toward the end of the movie…and a running time of 142 minutes.

All in all, can’t expect much more out of a summer blockbuster.

8 out of 10 CRs