Idiotic

Rating: 3/10 (10 July 2005)

It seems like I am the only one doesn't like Batman Begins. I'm not a fan, and my knowledge of Batman comes from the ones I watched back when I was 8, but it is still no excuse that the movie was done so poorly.
First of all, the plot and reasoning is nonexistent. For some reason, Bruce Wayne is in a Chinese prison. Somewhere along the line, *ninjas* become a part of the plot. The supposed Ra's Al Ghul is the leader of Liam and the ninjas, but what comes out of Liam's mouth is neither Chinese or Japanese. And Liam, being Caucasian, utters the only Japanese you'll hear in this movie, teaches Bruce "ninja skills" and proceeds to make a fool of himself by saying the lame Japanese names for every move before he executes them. Am I the only one who sees the problem with this?
The action scenes are dizzy and done in too many close ups in too many shots. The "batmobile" is an ugly, enormous, tanker, and all the stuff Bruce gets for his Batman gear comes not from Alfred but from his dad's company, which for some reason is involved with making trains AND making all this high tech military stuff that even the military doesn't want. Bruce's voice, when he's Batman, is just Bruce Wayne with a sore throat.
The biggest disappointment was the dialogue. The mentoring bit was too full of hocus pocus that is just repetition of "FEAR this" and "FEAR that" and "OVERCOME fear" that is supposed to be spiritual but results in what you can expect from a session with your psychologist but a thousand times cheesier. The dialogue was so poorly written that in every scene you have at least 3 actors reciting one-liners intended to "lighten up" the (pretentious) mood and garner knee-jerk chuckles from the audience, as you can see from the extremely long list of "memorable quotes". It was like the script writer said to himself "Hey I know, why not stick lots of funny one-liners one after the other so I can show the audience how witty I am". Also, his knowledge of "dialogue" doesn't extend further than questions and answers. For example:
Bruce: Who are you working for? Man: blah blah blah Bruce: Where? Man: blah Bruce: Why? Man: blah Bruce: When? ...ad nauseum
I could go on about more distractions and sheer idiocy (like when the city is sprayed with hallucinogens, Rachel and the random kid are not affected) but that would be beside the point, because the whole movie IS ONE BIG distraction. From other, better, movies that probably cost a quarter of Batman Begin's production cost.