The Dark Knight according to a clown-phobe

I did it. I went to see The Dark Knight. I know I said I wasn't going to see it in the theater, but a few factors were at play here. One was, we had babysitters available on Saturday night and we wanted to take advantage of that. Another was, just about everyone I know has seen the movie and I was really starting to feel left out. And the last one was, Brock told me he thought I could handle it, and that he didn't think my clown phobia was necessarily as debilitating as I might portray. (It's true that I don't generally run screaming from clowns, but they do freak me out pretty severely; still, he thought I would be okay and promised to warn me as much as possible about parts where I might want to cover my eyes.)

So, here is my review of The Dark Knight, from a clown-hater's perspective:

• Heath Ledger is the best Joker ever. And he really didn't frighten me much from a clown perspective - partially because I just kept telling myself it was Heath Ledger under all that makeup. Also, he was just a scary character, and would have been whether or not he was in creepy makeup. That was one really bad Bad Guy - the scariest kind of bad guy, who's not motivated by anything other than wanting to create chaos.
• I did spend a LOT of time hiding from clown masks, though. (There are three things I'm really afraid of: clowns, masks and storms. This movie had two out of three.) I felt like I missed a lot of the movie because of it. Brock was really good about warning me when I might not want to watch, but I felt like that happened pretty often.
  
• Two-Face actually freaked me out more than anything in the movie. And since he figures prominently in the last quarter of the movie, I didn't watch a lot of it. I listened to it, at least.
• I thought the film, overall, was really excellent. It didn't feel like a comic book movie at all. It just felt like a scary movie about Good vs. Evil and Order vs. Chaos. So I can see why people are saying it's one of the best movies ever. The story was really good, and there was a lot of suspense, and the chase scene through Lower Wacker (called Lower Fifth in the movie) was awesome.
• Speaking of Lower Wacker, it was cool watching the movie and recognizing all the stuff in Chicago.
• The "disappearing pencil trick" was amusing. Disturbing, but amusing.
• Maggie Gyllenhaal was way better as Rachel Dawes than Katie Holmes was. Sorry, Katie.
• Christian Bale is hot.
• It should have an R rating. Brock and I were talking about this, and we're sure it got a PG-13 because there's virtually no bad language and you really don't see a lot of blood or anything. But it's pretty intense and scary. I don't see how anything with that many bombs and fire and scary stuff can NOT be rated R.
  

Overall, I'm glad I saw it. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it entirely, but I did get to see what all the fuss was about and agree that it was deserved. I don't think I need to see it again anytime soon...or maybe ever...because there were just a lot of parts that made me really uncomfortable. But that's just because of my own personal phobias and has nothing to do with the movie. *chuckle* If you don't have a problem with clowns or clown masks, and you're one of the five people on the planet who hasn't seen the movie yet, then you should totally go see it.

If you do have a problem with clowns, just get it on DVD and watch it with someone who's already seen it so they can tell you when to cover your eyes. :)