Punish The Child

Rating: 5/10 (19 October 2008)

When we were boys we used to put the bath towel down the back of our shirt and make it a cape. We became Batman. Batman was a badass comic-book superhero who kept the streets of Gotham City safe. When you're a kid all you need is a towel and your imagination to have fun.
Now that we're adults, we evidently have to rationalize and justify the fantasy. Laughter is not allowed, and cardboard and towels are no longer acceptable. To recreate the once-innocent fantasy of being a crime-fighter we now need leather, latex, and steel. We've graduated from toys to sexual torture devices. And there's no more buzzing about the room with a smile on our face- frowns are required. And sadly there can be no joy in catching the bad guy because now we're just as morally compromised as he is, and the loose-legend that once framed our hero is now dour gospel, a precise back-story so painfully-constructed and realistically re-enacted that we cannot possibly deny it's all real, and all really happening.
Except it's not. This is a movie. A super-hero movie. And you can call me corny but I want to have fun when I go to a super-hero movie. It can be campy-fun, like the old Batman TV series, it can be dark-fun, like Jack Nicholson's Joker. It can even be corny, inspirational fun, like Richard Donner's Superman. But to watch a "Batman" this serious just drains the life out of me. Are we being punished for our youthful exuberance and fond memories of playing after school? This film works so hard to prove Batman is real that they forget we don't want him to be real. He's a fantasy... he exists in our imaginations. You filmmakers do remember imagination, don't you?
I'll get the towel.
GRADE: C