Batman, the famous character from children's comics is brought to 'life' by a cast of top class actors performing in the most overwrought and irony-free way possible. Instead of Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson having fun and winking at the audience we now have Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine and the rest seemingly under the impression they are in the next chapter of The Godfather, completely oblivious to the fact half the cast are wearing ridiculous fancy dress. Bale's sore throated performance as Batman is a particular stand-out of absurdity.

Director and co-writer Christopher Nolan delivers his usual trademarks of bits and pieces he saw in Kubrick films (how many more times is he going to ape the opening scene of The Shining?) and clunky exposition dumps. Michael Caine's speech about seeing Bale in the future but not speaking to him (eh?), is as lugubrious a piece of dialogue as you will ever hear.

Coming in at a brisk 165 minutes, The Dark Knight Rises is made even funnier by the fact that lots of grown men think it is a masterpiece.