Not nearly as good as the first film and only interesting because of Ledger's Joker

Rating: 6/10 (1 September 2008)

Ledger is irresistibly interesting in his portrayal of the Joker despite the somewhat hackneyed plot, and his performance saves the film from disaster. Without his performance I would have walked out as the rest of the film was trite, melodramatic, garbage.
Christian Bale gives wood a bad name as he soullessly meanders through the role. The guttural growling he performs as Batman may make sense to the plot but its almost unbearable to listen to .
The previous film with Bale a beaten down outcast and a man struggling for an identity was infinitely more interesting from an acting perspective than this film. Bale feels trapped in the role in this film going through the motions and he seems bored and unchallenged almost not knowing what to do with it. The plot also doesn't have the structure of the previous film. There was a appreciable beginning, middle, and end of the previous film that let things percolate, the action build, the plot be exposed.
This film is too evenly paced and like an unstructured watercolor the plot runs together and gets lost somewhere along the line.(or maybe I just lost interest) I remember seeing a scene with the Joker in a nurses costume, and while the character was interesting not knowing or caring at that point why the Joker was blowing the place up.
The Two-Face character was fairly weak, the emotions in the wronged Harvey Dent seemed forced and the plot explanation of his 'do-gooder' gone wrong personality seemed ham-fisted.
Maggie Gyllenhaal was not a particularly interesting character and there were no fireworks between her and either Bale or Eckhart. Michael Caine almost seemed to be biting his lips to spit out the lines in the film. He seems to be almost embarrassed to be in the film.
Acting wise the highlights are Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and of course Heath Ledger who you never doubt 100% inhabit their parts and actually add something positive to the film.
Unfortunately they are fighting an uneven script, a hackneyed story, and bad acting from Bale and others the whole way.
The result is an uneven, and eventually uninteresting film that relies on constant action and superficial delights to offset the uneven acting and flat out bad plot. Certainly inferior to its predecessor and without Ledger would have been an outright disaster.
I feel a bit alone on this analysis and I am surprised as anyone about this as I was expecting greatness when I went into the theater. But thats the way the cookie crumbles.