The Dark Knight Rises - Film Review by Basford Harper

Naturally, I was horrified when my editor, in his infinite wisdom, asked me to review a film that was showing at my local multiplex.

'But, Walter, surely you cannot expect Basford Harper, Bolehall's most influential arts critic, to review such a populist film, especially while the Tibetan Yodelling Symposium is taking place?' I said to him.
'Shut up, you bender,' was his reply. I begged him to reconsider but he grew angry and threw a laminator at my head.

So it was with a heavy heart and a dented cranium that I trooped down to the cavernous multiplex, where I sat amongst the great unwashed as they chomped their "popped corn" and "malted teasers" and wished I was immersing myself in the intoxicating delights of the Tibetan's full-throated yodel (STOP TALKING ABOUT YODELLING YOU BENDER - ED)

The film began with a black screen, with just the name of the film, the number/letter combination 12A and some signatures. Initially, I was puzzled at the meaning of this scene. What was the director, one Christopher Nolan, patriarch of the famous Nolan sisters singing group, trying to say? I felt that the key to unlocking this mystery lay in that complex letter/number code.

After some considerable cogitation on the subject, I painstaking unravelled it. In the Bible, there are the twelve sons of Israel, and in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlett Letter,' heroine Hester Prynne wears the letter A on her nightgown, as a sign that she is an adulteress. Putting these two facts together, I think it is safe to assume that the director wants an extra-marital affair with a dozen Jews.

By the time I'd deciphered this conundrum, the film was almost over, but isn't this revelation the most telling thing you'll ever read about this mainstream fluff, dear reader? Even though I can't see you, I can already sense you nodding your heads in vigorous agreement.

These are some other thoughts I had about the piece:

• The protagonist is described as a knight, and yet his behaviour is completely unbecoming as one of Her Majesty's knights of the realm. Is he a thinly veiled fictional representation of a real knight? If he is, my money is on Sir Terry Wogan.
• I found it very hard to believe that a wealthy socialite like Bruce Wayne would hire such a common butler.
• I've got a feeling that this Bruce Wayne fellow may have been in on this whole Batman thing. I'm not sure why, but there were several subtle hints dotted throughout the film that an uneducated eye wouldn't have noticed.

So, that is that. I hope I never have to review such a base piece of "art" ever again. Next week, this column will resume normal service, with my review of jazz virtuoso Strabek Vaglips's latest opus 'Magna Doodle Dandy,' an album of hard-bop classics played entirely on a stylophone.