I saw this movie opening night, a fan of Batman Begins, and eager to see the next installment of a promising franchise. I purposely avoided the "hype" prior to watching - I like to watch a movie with as little preconception as possible.

After having seen the movie, I am blown away... by the 30-something pages (at present) of cloned reviews stating that The Dark Knight is "a masterpiece" "an instant classic" "epic" "better than the hype" "legendary" "oscar-worthy", etc. It wouldn't bother me so much except all 30 pages of reviews say *exactly* the same contrived things. Not until after you get past these "glowing" marketing reviews, do you see 10 pages of real honest reviews buried in the back. The real tragedy is that I used to feel that this website was credible, but now I'm not so sure. A few hundred picture perfect reviews here are worth multiple millions in next weekend's ticket sales. That's an easy decision for a marketing department to make.

But back to The Dark Knight and back to reality. Here are just a few of the problems with it:

















I really wanted to love this film as much as Batman Begins, but unfortunately I found my interest drifting at times. It was not a bad movie, and there were some great moments as well, but just not the "masterpiece" the marketing types want you to believe.