New Batman flick symbolizes what 'sucks' about America

Hey, hey have you ever picked up one of those free movie passes at your local bookstore or coffee shop. Or won one on your local radio station. If so, then you know my pain.

My pain is all about Pavlov and the American soul.

Oh yeah . and "Batman and Robin" .

That was the deal, me and art maven Anthony R. Ashley out last Tuesday to see the summer movie event the country has been waiting for. And for free.

We got there early, 6 p.m., knowing full well that a 7:30 screening can be filled at 6:30. The couple at the front of the line got there at 4:30 p.m. - fully three hours before the movie began. They said it was because they ran out of stuff to do, but tha t this was nothing. This was inside. They waited as long outside for three hours to see "Star Wars."

See this Batman shit, or rather, guano, it's a big deal. Ask Channel 13, they went live from the line at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. Ask KMFA and their traveling troupe of personalities. (Great stumper: Can you tell Chuck Roast and Chad apart by voice when they're not spinning in their respective time slots?)

I got a bumper sticker from them. Anthony got an antenna ball and a key chain.

We got to stand near Roger Leon, super weekend disc jockey, standing anonymously in line. I didn't let on, but I knew his voice from many a dreary Saturday evening in my lonely bedroom

The Tucson Weekly had a sign up declaring their sponsorship of the event.

For all the groups wanting to associate themselves with the movie, there was very little excitement in the group. I couldn't sense or hear the anticipation that had, for example, accompanied the "Star Wars" reissue. There were no people in bat garb. There was only one Batman t-shirt in the whole group.

Anthony did bring a festive Batman Pez dispenser.

Once inside the theater, the capacity crowd halfheartedly played along with Chad's trivia contest for, guess what, free Batman stuff from the Warner Bros. store.

The whole vibe was summed up best by a woman behind in line.

"What else are you going to do in Tucson?"

That's another stumper.

Finally, the movie begins.

Now, my mom always talks about how I gasped when I saw "Superman" as a child - how when that big S came across the screen I was breathless and enrapt.

I heard no sighs, no catching of breath at the screening.

At all.

Not one.

And then we open up on Batman and Robin in the Bat cave preparing to ride into the night.

And then Batman and Robin are fighting Mister Freeze and his horrible, lake of icy fire cliches.

They start early and keep coming. Icy this and cold that. Mr. Freeze is supposed to be a Nobel Prize winning scientist, yet he seems as inarticulate as the Incredible Hulk.

Actually, all the characters do, because they don't talk, they deliver.

It's one liners like "Chicks dig the car," followed by action.

And more action.

Explosion after explosion, until you wonder what the point is.

Is director Joel Shumacher the kid in my neighborhood with no gift for narrative play? Who would build block cities and destroy them out of frustration with his inability to imagine human behavior.

Action movies used to be character driven, not action driven. "Lethal Weapon" or "Raiders of the Lost Ark," had character development. And they did it through dialogue. By allowing actors the space and time to act. George Clooney becomes merely a smirk u nder Shumacher's lens. Chris O'Donnell is just a cod piece.

The bad jokes and double entendres are given emphasis because they exist in a vacuum.

The camera moves so fast that you can never establish what kind of space the actors are moving in, much less what they mean.

The pacing is all wrong; it's a two hour trailer.

I was looking at my watch.

I was insulted that Americans can't be allowed quality writing along with their excitement.

I am now convinced that everything sucks. Day to day, we consumers put up with more stuff that sucks than is rational. Movies suck, but we plunk down $43.6 million to see this one. Our apartment complex sucks, but we don't move. Service at Carl's Jr. suck s and we don't say a goddamn thing. We eat it and drink it. We buy it because we are consumers. That's what we do. We don't like it , but we come back, again and again, for the same crap. I say we don't just boycott Disney. I say we boycott everybody.