Knee-jerk review: "The Batman"

1. It's three hours long, people.  That's important to know up front.
2. Does it feel like three hours?  Not really.  Does it need to be three hours?  Not really.
3. It's well made.  And at times, there is a definite artfulness to it.  The fist fight illuminated solely by the intermittent flash of machine guns is haunting.  This is no surprise.  Director Matt Reeves knows what he's doing - Cloverfield is fantastic and his two Planet of the Apes reboot films are top notch.
4. The movie has the same sort of vibe as Christopher Nolan's overrated The Dark Knight (2008).  It's all very serious and important.  And mostly humorless.  These are sad, rather hopeless characters.
5. It may feel like The Dark Knight, but the closer cousin is David Fincher's masterpiece Seven (1995) what with following a serial killer's trail of creepy clues amid the dark and rainy streets of an amoral urban nightmare.  The Riddler is John Doe, you see.
6. Robert Pattinson's pasty, ghoulish appearance makes for the strongest onscreen suggestion yet that Batman is perhaps a little too similar to the unhinged criminals he pursues.
7. At least we didn't have to again watch Bruce Wayne's parents die in an alley. 
8. This is one dark, dark movie.  It's like someone didn't pay the electricity bill.  Even a hospital ward suffers from moody, dim lighting.  The Little Fry whispered to us at one point "Why is everything so dark?"
9. Can we agree that Jeffrey Wright elevates any movie he's in?
10. The plot is pretty complicated and doubles back on itself, connecting the leaders and gangsters of Gotham City in unexpected ways.  We weren't expecting that.
11. Cool contact lens camera.
12. Colin Farrell is unrecognizable as the Penguin, but one thing is clear: he's doing an Al Pacino impression.  And it's pretty good.
13. The ending is nice and big, but the water business seemed a bit too much to us, like someone somewhere thought the ending needed to be, you know, just a little bit bigger.
14. There is a fairly satisfying arc to Batman involving his "I'm vengeance" catchphrase.
15. Yes, Batman does spend a lot of time acting like a cop chasing down leads and examining evidence.  It's a got a solid police procedural feel.  But several of his successes come from happenstance and coincidence, like the random cop in the right place at the right time who has an uncle that installs carpets.  Okaaaay.
16. They just couldn't do a Batman movie without including the Joker, could they?
17. Did we mention it's three hours long?
18. The car chase is pretty exciting, at least what we can see of it in the dim lighting and pouring rain.
19. We suppose the biggest problem with the movie is just the question of... why?  At what point do audiences grow weary of watching yet another incarnation of the same characters exploring the same sorts of stories?  Given that The Batman has made $500 million in less than two weeks, the answer would seem to be "not anytime soon."
20. Can the next Batman be more fun possibly?  Turn on a light, Bruce.

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