Not so great as they say

Rating: 1/10 (18 July 2008)

I'm sorry but I'm not being paid to write these reviews and it sure looks like those ahead of me are. Did we see the same picture? I thought it was too long, confusing, poor plot line, very very dark, a lot of gratuitous violence and Ledger's performance was just not Oscar material as so many are proclaiming. During the movie several people got up and left. There were a couple of times there my date and I thought about leaving but we paid premium bucks to see the thing and you hate wasting money like that.
The film gets off to a pretty good start. We were all excited but as it went along it began to drag. Ledger looks awful and they relied enitrely on makeup (with no prosthetics they way they did with Nicholson) to give you the impression of a smiling joker. Here it was just white and red makeup piled on the way a six-year old might do after getting into mommy's makeup. And dark. Everything was so dark throughout the film that each time someone opened a flip phone it was as bright as a flashlight! (I thought, surely they aren't going to call anyone but because so many were doing it I figured they were looking at the time - a sure sign that the film was lumbering along.)
From this viewer's perspective I thought it was awful.