I still feel that the first half of this movie is a complete snooze fest and the soundtrack, specifically the hero track, is overly repetitive and annoying as all get out. Also, everything about the Riddler made me loose interest in the move every time they were talking about his stupid rhymes, jokes, or holiday cards. In fact, I think you could rip the entire Riddler portion of the movie out and still have a pretty ok film with just the Penguin / Wayne / Arkham storyline.
Which brings me to what I did like, which was everything related to the Penguin, Catwoman, the family shenanigans, and even Batman himself. It would have been easy to go to far into the brooding “barely out of his teens” Batman first earning the ropes, but Robert Pattinson did a surprisingly good job as the character, same with Colin Farrell as Penquin and Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman, both of whom are now my favorite versions of those characters. Additionally, I’m a huge Batmobile nerd and this version of the car really does it for me, it’s the appearance of this suped up car that’s when I feel the movie really starts to kick, though that’s about an hour in.
The family enjoyed this one overall. My biggest complaint is that the ending goes on too long. I think it should have ended when Batman was on the roof helping people. That shot where he’s looking up and into the camera, cut at the end of that shot and end the movie there. We don’t need the Riddler/Joker scene, and we don’t need the seemingly endless riding motorcycles out of the cemetery scene. I think the movie works better without both of them.
I agree to both your points.