I can't believe the hype overdrive

Rating: 4/10 (22 July 2008)

It is unnerving that this film has received one of the highest rankings I have seen or heard of at IMDb, although I am a part-timer here. My experience has been that even the best films of the last century are generally in the 8.0 - 9.0 range. Anyway, let me go beyond analysis of reviews.
I saw the movie last night, and was struck first by how difficult the voices were to hear. My son, who is 19, spontaneously offered the same comment to me. And there were no British accents (that I recall)! It was the loud, ominous music pulsing in the background, and possibly issues in the theater (which appeared to be very well maintained, however), that seemed to obscure the dialogue in many places.
Now, the guts of the movie: this film falls into the category of slightly better-than-average kids/fantasy movie. The top in that field was indeed Lord of the Rings (all three), and I also consider Terminator 1 and 2, and the first Matrix, to all exceed The Dark Knight by quite a margin in enjoyability and quality. So, I am not set against fantasy as a category of entertainment or creativity.
However, this movie was fragmented with many sub-plots that did not seem artistically to jell well together. There was also a typical lack of subtlety in the actors (and their scripts) that you might expect in comic book fantasy, and during my watching of Dark Knight I constantly missed movies such as (to name just a very few) Dr. Strangelove, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Swept Away, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It's a Wonderful Life, which all exceeded Dark Knight in wit, dialogue, acting, or humor (or all the above).
What were the strong points? Well, again, it was not so bad for the genre - the acting was workmanlike given the one-dimensional or unreal dialogue. The Joker (Heath Ledger) really was performed with great intensity and is probably the standout feature the breaks the limits of the rest of the film. The characterizations were far from terrible - touches of humor with Alfred (Michael Caine), the love interest that had some sensitivity and adultiness to it, and again, Joker's performance.
When does our public have a chance to see real movies of quality, and learn to distinguish expensive, earnest, but childlike efforts from masterworks of adult art, whether comedy, adventure, or tragedy? Apparently not very often.
Despite the noticeable islands of quality in Dark Knight, my sense was that of having been swept away by a wave of excess and hyper-drama, and I came away feeling that there were a wide variety of better ways I could have passed three hours.