Whatever happened to Batman, the comic book character who had fun-to-watch adventures with his sidekick Robin?

Robin has disappeared and Batman seems to have joined the life-is-real-life-is-earnest school. Is it Iraq, the terror threat or just lack of screenwriting imagination?

Tough to tell, but "The Dark Knight" will doubtless make gazillions of dollars anyway, for many reasons, not the least of which is that it's our official farewell to Heath Ledger. Ledger camps up his Hannibal Lecter version of the Joker something fierce and is by far the most fun to watch.

This edition of the franchise has a noisy score and lots of stuff blowing up and even six IMAX scenes (nothing to get excited about). What it lacks is a sense of humor and a notion about the essential silliness of this premise.

Christian Bale's Batman is gorgeous but so damnably, completely, utterly good that he's a bore. Maggie Gyllenhaal takes over as poor old Rachel. She does the best she can with a nothing role. Aaron Eckhart at least gets to go from gorgeous Harvey Dent to the half-hideous Two-Face mid-film, at least mildly interesting but still no fun. The bad guys are the bad guys; Michael Caine is his usual excellent self.

But heck, saving Gotham is such a drudge that "The Dark Knight" turns out to be just an overlong (2:20) slog.

Opens July 18, 2008. Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and some menace.