Sprawling, Enthralling, and...Frustrating!

Rating: 6/10 (17 June 2013)

POSSIBLE SPOILERS:
The late Liberace said, " Too Much of a Good Thing is Wonderful! "
Unfortunately, that maxim does not apply to TDKR. For here we have a movie that has more good things that it knows what to do with, and ultimately, all this excess weight brings it down from the status of a masterwork, like, ' T.D.K. ', before it.
The film starts out SO strong, with such clear and crisp character and story introductions that you feel certain that you are viewing a future classic. It also helps that Anne Hathaway is by far the hottest Catwoman Ever!
But then, every good ingredient and plot device gets poured on with a dump truck:
Here are some examples-
SPOILERS:
-Thousands of police get trapped underground with only bare minimum supplies for months? And yet they are still able to emerge ready to fight?
-Bane outfights, overpowers, and defeats Batman, & then goes to all the trouble to place Bruce Wayne in a huge hole in the ground, which is somewhere-we don't know where, and leaves him unguarded???
-And when Bruce gets free, and has no money, nor means of communication, nor any other resources. Nor does he even know where in the world he is! Yet a short time later, he arrives safely back in Gotham, a city which has had all routes to the outside world severed!!!
-When Batman faces Bane again for the rematch, he is coming off of months in a prison cell, with no means to train seriously, or develop new tactics, or even properly heal from any of his injuries. Yet he still overpowers the same foe that beat him so badly the first time.
All this just seemed so superfluous and over the top: Wouldn't it have been much more believable to-
-have the cops trapped underground for just a s matter of hours?
-And have Bane confine Bruce someplace nearer to the action, so he could get back in the action sooner?
-And have Bruce some way to heal and get his, ' mojo ', back, so that we could actually buy him taking down Bane in the rematch?
Now of course, ' T.D.K. ', had the great advantage of Heath Ledger's amazing performance. Yet another reason it worked so well is that, despite being a superhero movie, Nolan's direction, as well as the script, were both so lean and muscular and focused, that the story could still tread on the razor's edge of believability, to the point of even creating the appearance of some gritty realism.
But, ' T.D.K.R. ', can make no such illusion seem real, not after the first hour or so, anyway. It just tries to do too much.
So in this case, too much of a good thing is, sadly, not wonderful.
BTW: Another reviewer also noted that the plot in this film appeared to borrow from the 1999 James Bond flick, ' The World is Not Enough ". Well, to be sure there are similarities, but since Hollywood films by their nature seem to parasitically feed off of their predecessors, I'll let someone else judge that.
M