Fun but frustrating experience

Rating: 7/10 (24 July 2012)

Much like many of today's "Kitchen Sink" films such as transformers, avengers, battlefield LA, Battleship etc, we arrive at the thankfully last of Nolan's exhaustively ponderous and dull batman films. The film's not bad, but neither is it very good. This is essentially the problem with many's extreme reactions to these new batman movies. There's never any middle ground; you either loved it or hated it. I've seen many films as a child and teen that I felt were simply good, not totally offensive or completely perfect. Same here really... and that's also how I feel about Nolan's turn at batman as a whole, Heath Ledger's stunning Joker performance aside.
Bale once again delivers a mediocre performance as Batman, who despite being without limits, can't suit up because he's sad about a friend dying... OK, I'll go with it. The villains and new sidekick Robin (yep) completely outclass him in his own movie. He sleep walks through this movie. That's expected of him since the last two films, so it's my fault if I'm surprised at all by that. What's left to hold your interest is the new character Bane, who is actually pretty cool and energizes the film in every scene until his true role is revealed and he's completely gutted as a character and threat for whatever reason. It supposedly makes sense, but it's too muddled and I honestly don't care enough about these movies to try to understand the convoluted story it creates.
There are moments within this big funky monkey of a film that are truly great. I really liked the part where bruce learns to use the force and face his fears, but I can say the same about batman forever and even batman and robin. In a lot of ways, sorry to say, with bane's thick accent and his rather one note mustache twirling villain schemes I felt like I was watching batman and robin again.
Things happen. Lots of deep technical stuff is said. And you're either going to have the patience to go along for the wacky ride this movie has in store for you or you're not. It's up to you, and whether you care about these movies from the start. I lost interest around the time Joker showed up and made batman the side character. If there's any real positive to this film, it's that batman does have some actual screen time in this one, but too bad, it's over, no more time left, bye bye... time for robin....
I thought this was about batman...