The theater seats were old-style and comfy, though

So I'm apparently the only person in America who didn't like Batman Begins. It's pretty mindboggling to look at the reviews and see rave after rave for this basically mediocre blockbuster.

In no particular order:

• The cast includes Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Rutger Hauer ... and that's too many. There are so many good ingredients that none of them is given a chance to stand out. None of them really has a good scenery-chewing monologue, or even a single defining scene, and that's kind of a pity. (I guess Rutger Hauer's been running on fumes for a while now, but I still think he's cool.)
  
• What's with all the fear stuff? "What do you fear?" "I fear bats." "You must create fear in others. You must become fear. You must become fear by becoming what you fear...." et cetera ... Driving home, I felt like if I heard the word "fear" one more time I'd freakin' snap. I felt the same way after Revenge of the Sith, only with the word "Darth". There's a drinking game in there somewhere, and the very idea of drinking games is so banal that it would fit right in with these two movies.
  
• Batman, as he's shown here, is largely free of charisma. I guess he's not supposed to be charismatic or sympathetic, what with the "embodiment of fear" thing he had going on, but when you have a superhero who's unsympathetic, uncharismatic, and basically unlikable, then you have this big gaping hole in the center of the movie: with whom are we supposed to identify: this emo rich guy in bondage gear? He's no hero; he's a guy with no place he has to be during the day. If you were being lazy, you could say that Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver is an example of an unlikable nocturnal protagonist, "and that's a good movie, Mr. Grumpy Pants." That's true, but with that movie the audience had to think, had to fill in the blanks: why was Travis the way he was? How many people are like that and we don't know it? In Batman Begins, the audience is pummelled over the head with flashbacks. What are we, idiots?
  
• The little DC Comics company montage at the beginning was kind of a rip-off of the Marvel one. That didn't really have anything to do with the movie as a whole, but it was a sign of the half-assedness that was to follow.
• The movie was too rushed. Bruce Wayne is dropped off in the middle of nowhere. Then he's picking up the flower. Then he's knocking on the door to Ninja School. There was no sense of time passing, of the length of his journey, of geography or anything. Jeez, I could go to Ninja School if it were that easy. Spies Like Us had a better grasp of this sort of thing, and that was directed by the guy who does the voice of Miss Piggy.
• What's the deal with the flashbacks to Bruce using the stethoscope on his dad? Was it intended as a veiled reference to Batman's boyhood molestation? It was just a little on the creepy side.
• OK, again with the "rushed" criticism ... At one point Batman is jumping around fire escapes or something, and this little boy sees him and the boy goes, "It's OK, Batman; you're a hero," or some unlikely crap like that. The question is, how does the boy know? We're never given an idea of where the public stands on this "masked vigilante" issue.
• I don't like the rubber Batsuits, I never did, and I never will. Batman looks like a giant vibrator.
• OK, so he's got the fancy-ass suit, assembled at home from parts ordered from all over the world so nobody could catch on ... and at no point do they give away Batman's beauty tips. He's clearly wearing greasepaint around his eyes, but they don't tell us if he picked it up from a theatrical supply shop or from the MAC counter at Macy's or anything. And what kind of cold cream does he use to get rid of it? Is it off-the-shelf or some sort of military grade cold cream that Morgan Freeman was working on?

Bah.