We were pleased to see two other persons that we knew at the theater, both of whom are younger comic book fans, so as to compare notes with afterwards.

For me, this movie was not as 'dark' / grim & gritty as I feared it would be.

That was a plus for the film for me. Although I still wouldn't take young children to see the film at the theater.

Christian Bale as Batman was better for me in this new film, possilbly because he was on screen less as Batman this time. Actually it seemed that he played Bruce Wayne a little more in this film... That was okay with me as he is not my favorite Batman / Bruce Wayne in the several Batman films that have been out to date.

However, the Joker, played by Heath Ledger in his final role, was darn near perfect in his role as the villain in the  film.  He wasn't over the top, nor was there the gratitous violence that would have marred his role. A lot of the violence occured off screen or was insinuated.

Gary Oldman came through in this film, fleshing out his role as Lieutenant / Commissioner Gordon. 

Michael Caine seemed more limited as Alfred in this film. That didn't affect either way, good or bad.

Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox shined in his return role and was a pleasure to watch.

I just couldn't get into Maggy Gyllenhaal's attempt to replace Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes. Neither actress worked for me in either film.

Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent was more than just a minor character in this film. I enjoyed seeing his role expanded for this film.

Other roles were more than ably played by additional actors.

The film itself was well written and was self contained in this 2 1/2 hour long movie. However the film IMHO was a little long... maybe by 15 minutes or so...

Because of the length of the film, I rate this film as a VF/NM in grading terms with a 9.0 out of 10.0 possible numerical score.

As for one of the other two younger fans, he (Eddie) give this a solid 'A', his dad (Gary) gave it a A+, and the younger brother Andrew gave it an A++.