Watching a superdeluxe presentation of The Dark Knight unfold across the eight-story-tall IMAX theater in Manhattan, I had a nagging question: why was the mayor of Gotham City wearing eyeliner and mascara? The movie has anvil-sized matters on its mind, like duality, and good and evil, and guilt and expiation — enough weighty themes to overstuff a Dostoevsky novel. But I latched onto that one stupid detail, a clear Bat-signal that the Caped Crusader had returned but wasn’t doing that much for me.

The next morning I had my answer: the actor is Nestor Carbonell, who apparently looks much the same on Lost. I’m sure that’s a fine islander look (I wouldn’t know, as I don’t watch the show), but it was curious for a stuffed shirt in an urban jungle. It kept throwing me out of the bigger picture that cowriter and director Christopher Nolan had made to follow up Batman Begins, the one that fanboys have been salivating over since 2005. Maybe it was the fault of the towering IMAX process, which enhances what works in a film — here, a semi-superfluous trip to Hong Kong distinguished by death-defying visuals when Batman takes flight in its glass-and-steel canyons, and a truck flip that lands in your lap — but amplifies what doesn’t, like an offbeat makeup job. You might not even notice it at your garden-variety multiplex, which is where I had planned to see The Dark Knight an additional one or two more times. Once may be enough, though. With apologies to those with tickets in hand for the weekend, and those so engorged on the hype that dissenters must be rooted out and punished by the time the weekend tally rolls in, I can no longer beat about the Bat-bush, and must announce that The Dark Knight is the most disappointing movie of the year.

It was not supposed to be this way, and I’m as crushed to report this as you may be to read it. Nolan, the creator of the mind-bending Memento (2000), rescued Batman from the ash heap of the Joel Schumacher era (1995’s Batman Forever and 1997’s Batman & Robin), which made the Adam West TV series look like Strindberg by comparison, and Batman Begins is one of the more confident “origins” stories, a slate wiped clean for renewal. True, it is fairly ponderous, and heavy with portent; the Gothic fun of Tim Burton’s contributions (1989’s Batman and 1992’s Batman Returns) was missed, and I’ll say up front that I prefer Burton’s fantastic touch. (Sit me down in front of Batman Returns and I won’t budge for two hours.) By bringing the Joker back onto the scene, The Dark Knight promised to shake off some of the gloom and get its freak on. But it has a serious case of the glums and progresses at a lurching, dawdling pace — it’s the Atonement of superhero sagas.

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