"Wanna see a magic trick?"

If you've seen the movie, you know that line in the title is actually very menacing. Or rather, it's what comes afterward that is so menacing. I think the whole movie theater jumped in shock.

Brent and I, along with about 6 friends, went to go see The Dark Knight tonight. It was in honor of Brent's birthday earlier this week and it seemed fitting that for my movie/comic book geek husband's celebration, we go see this movie.

We were a little too close in the theater, but tickets were selling out fast early in the week and we didn't have much choice. Because of the huge amount of action, I would have preferred sitting back about 10 more rows. Besides that, my only beef with the entire movie was that Christian Bale's voice when he was Batman got kind of goofy towards the end of the movie. It was breathy and hard to understand and sounded like he was really forcing it (yeah, he did that for this entire movie and for the last one, but this time it got weird).

Do NOT take kids to this movie. It is dark and actually kind of scary, but not in any kind of a horror movie type of way. The lines between good and evil become blurred. The Joker is menacing, not because he is mean, but because he is interested in suffering. And he is absolutely insane.

The buzz about Heath Ledger's performance and how it might even be Oscar-worthy is not at all because he's dead. It is because he so completely disappears into the role that it's hard to imagine the same guy could also be a gay cowboy and a rogue jouster and a vaguely Shakespearean high schooler. No exaggeration. He is simply brilliant and looking back at Jack Nicholson's Joker is almost painful. And of course, Christian Bale is still great as Bruce Wayne/Batman. Goofy voice at times, but otherwise the entire movie is magnificent.

Of course, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman were perfect. I thought Aaron Eckhart was perfect for Harvey Dent, and Maggie Gyllanhaal was an awesome replacement for completely unbelievable Katie Holmes.

Now for the technical stuff...

The movie is dark in that the colors are dark but also that the whole feel of the movie is dark. The effects are spot on, the makeup is perfect (I'm talking about the Joker, his henchmen, and Harvey Dent/Two-Face), the timing is superb - no slow parts, etc. Yeah, my absolute only complaint about anything in the movie is with the Batman voice.

That doesn't mean I want to see it again right away. In fact, it's pretty darn intense and dark and I will probably be content to see it next when it's out on video. I'm not sure why. Maybe "crazy" hits a little too close to home.

I LOVED this movie. I would give it 4 and 4/5 out of 5 stars. It would have gotten 5/5 if only the Batman voice weren't so goofy.