Bale is a distractingly bad actor
This has always bothered me: It takes an actor without any sense of subtlety whatsoever for people to sit back and say, "What a great actor." Throughout The Fighter, it felt as though Bale was winking to the camera, saying, "Look at me, everybody! I'm acting! Now where's my Oscar?" I was constantly taken out of the film because of Bale's distractingly self-conscious performance.
Good actors work with such subtlety that their performances go unnoticed, and, unfortunately, are often not recognized. Bale's performance in The Fighter is just the opposite: Loud, self-conscious, and totally distracting.
EDIT: This thread won't die, largely because the majority of people replying are misunderstanding my argument. For that reason, I'll reiterate the clarification I made earlier:
It's possible to play a loud character and do it right. For example, the character of Taketoki Washizu in Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood is one that requires a broad performance. Toshirô Mifune delivers just that in a way that keeps me engaged in the film from beginning to end.
By contrast to Mifune's performance, Christian Bale broadcasts the fact that he's acting in a way that takes me out of the movie. My problem isn't with the loud character--my problem is the way Bale performs the character in a manner that makes him seem like he is acting, thereby taking me out of the film, rather than seamlessly embodying the character as a good actor should.