DARK KNIGHT RISES

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES continues my increasing dissatisfaction with our culture's obsession with comic book characters. Although parts of the film are quite good, the fact that people want to sit through a very long movie that takes itself way too seriously about a superhero says a lot more about the audience than it does about the filmmakers. There are so many intelligent movies that could be seen, yet audiences want this forgettable and predictable drivel.

I had put off seeing this movie as long as I could; living only a few miles from the scene of the Aurora shooting puts a pall over trying to enjoy a film with much violence in it as visceral entertainment.

There are a ton of problems with the script, the most obvious being that Batman has no real reason to trust Catwoman other than his Bat-boner and a need to create an act two for the script. (Imagine if he were smart and did not involve her? The movie would be over in 40 minutes, and probably would be a better film.) It's real hard to care about a Batman who is this stupid.

For me there will always be only one Batman: Adam West. I've been watching that series in reruns lately and I can't believe how much they got right half a century ago that they still get wrong today. It was a fun and deliberately campy show that worked on several more levels than these movies do.

I don't get the appeal of Anne Hathaway. To me she looks the sister you are nice to, only so you can get closer to her more attractive sibling. She's an excellent actress, but I honestly thought she looked more attractive in the Get Smart movie than here. And don't even think about comparing her to the 1960s Catwomen, Julie Newman or Eartha Kitt.

And then there's Bane, a character who whose face we never see but his voice is so loud it's painful. Why do I care about this guy? If I have to read a comic book as research before seeing the movie, your screenplay stinks. Start over.