Joker

Directed by: Todd Phillips
Written by: Todd Phillips, Scott Silver
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Frances Conroy

Swift shot: This is not my Joker. He’s unfunny, miserable, and weird. If he’s your Joker, ask yourself, why. And spare me the notion that this clown is the American Guy Fawkes.

According to Travis Langley, “The Joker defies diagnosis . . . We just don’t know what’s going on inside his head and for storytelling purposes, it’s best that we don’t. Knowing he had a specific mental illness might engender our sympathy.” [1]

And that is my problem with this movie, it removes the mystery about what makes the Joker who he is by overexposing us to who he is. And then the character we get is far from any Joker iteration I could ever respect.

Joker is probably the most hyped film of the 2010s. Thanks to the asshole who shot-up a movie theater and killed dozens of people in Colorado back in 2012 while he was dressed as the Joker, supposedly the Army was alerted to be on the lookout for revolutionary dissidents following the release of this movie seven years later.

And the media has practically begged for theater violence! One comedian on Twitter even created this GIF to show how they are feeding this garbage:

Man oh man, what would we do without the news #JokerMovie pic.twitter.com/Xp3mD3Ymzw

— Max G (@BrainDumpTweets) October 2, 2019

And when I entered into the theater to see it myself, there was a sign on the box office warning me that it wasn’t like any other comic book movie I had ever seen. Right, because I didn’t see Logan, or Deadpool, or Watchmen, or Super. Spare me your PR bullshit! Let your movie stand on its own without all this phony contrived paranoia; I am not impressed.

Anyway, despite preferring Marvel movies to DC movies, I was actually really excited to see Joker. He is one of my favorite villains, and I have always thought Phoenix is an underrated genius. He may still be, but I didn’t like this movie.

I wasn’t impressed with Joker as an entertaining movie. It was more cinemuh (pretentious and artsy) than a must-see-movie. Almost forty minutes could have been cut out of its two hour run time. And I hope you like cello music and smoking, because there is plenty in Joker.

How many times do I have to see Joaquin Phoenix do nothing on camera for minutes at a time? Sure, there are already people handing him the Oscar for his performance, but really it’s because he was forced to act his narrow ass off with what appeared to be no real direction and a weak script.

I have always liked the lessor Phoenix just fine, and after Gladiator, I realized he is a master thespian. But, so what? That doesn’t make him The Joker. Who is your Joker? For my liking, Joker has to be funny and fatal. Otherwise he’s just another psychopath. To whit, Jack Nicholson is still my Joker.

Joker was a long, boring glimpse into what drives a person to violence. At least, that was the goal, but if you were paying attention, that isn’t what you got at all.

Let me explain.

The rest of this review will contain major spoilers, proceed at your own risk!

Joker, or Arthur Fleck is an insane person who needs his meds to cope with a neurological disorder that makes him laugh uncontrollably in uncomfortable situations. This removes the very thing that makes the Joker character interesting. Also, he’s so unfunny it is painful to watch. It’s doubly painful to watch when he does his stupid dance. How many idiots are going to be mimicking that asinine thing for Halloween? Hint: ALL OF THEM!

So, Fleck is just a guy who was abused as a kid and has mommy issues (how original). And his disorder is now actually recognized in the DSM V. It’s called pseudobulbar affect, coded as 310.81. There’s your Joker.

And whenever Fleck does this laugh, it’s so off-putting and creepy and devoid of emotion that it only serves to depress the audience. But, wait, there’s a lot more depression on the horizon.

The movie starts with a garbage strike, and we see Fleck getting basically no help from his social worker. What really changes in Joker is that Fleck can no longer get his meds, and he starts to act out more. That’s it, basically. All the other external hecklers are just compounding that sad reality. So, an already unstable guy has his meds taken away and finally snaps.

To me, all the context about how society is pushing him to violence is moot. It’s the meds he’s deprived of that make him a maniac.

In fact, in one beating he gets, he just kind of shrugs it off, but then a beating he gets later on he ends with slaughtering his abusers. From there, he really begins to change. But what changed in him, other than some dipshit at work giving him a gun? What external stimulus brought out the inevitable Joker persona?

And when he finally does kill those yuppies, it’s like the storytellers are encouraging you to view him as a hero. It reminded me of the Goetz subway shooting in 1984, but with the races changed and making the yuppies would-be rapists. Oh, and that is one of those “too graphic” scenes that allegedly caused people to leave the theater.

When did these kids get so soft, man? We see worse stuff on the news in my city. Shit, WSVN was asked to stop showing these stories in hotels, because tourists wouldn’t leave the fucking rooms out of fear! Also, say hello to Scarface, the chainsaw scene alone was so disturbing I don’t even like mentioning it out-loud. So, again, I think these stories are hyped up bullshit about people leaving the theater.

I will say this, a guy at my theater got up at the end and declared to the rest of us that one thing he took from the movie is how much he didn’t miss New York. And New York, err, Gotham City is a real shithole of a place. Bleak doesn’t begin to describe Fleck’s life. He lives with his mom in a crappy neighborhood in a terribly run-down apartment.

And he’s already a clown when we meet him, because having him get disfigured in a chemical spill wasn’t cool enough for writer Scott Silver. Let’s just make him a clown to begin with.

So, he probably makes dick and all of the money he does make goes to take care of his mom and he has only one real time of fun in his life. He watches the Murray Franklin show with his mom, and they bond over that.

Fleck lives in a complete fantasy world in his head, where he is the star. I actually liked that aspect of the movie, and I would have appreciated if we had more stuff like that than just “moments of acting,” as I call them. Where it’s like, hey watch me act, I am so good at acting, can you see? Yes, and I can tell you are doing your weird dancing thing to that cello music and smoking your cigarettes, again. And I am sighing in boredom – again.

And, my God, for a movie about a clown, and a joker, I didn’t laugh even once. Not a chuckle. Would it have killed them to add some fucking levity to this script? I mean, Todd Phillips directed The Hangover and Due Date! And Bradley Cooper produced this movie devoid of any personality. How is that possible?

Unless you are a buffoon, you know that all the interactions he had with his neighbor weren’t real. I mean, please tell me you knew that, guys! So, watching each of those scenes was again just cringe-worthy and depressing.

I will say I was happy that they didn’t “go there” and make Thomas Wayne his father, because that would have pissed me off to no end. Of course his mom was making it up, and I liked that they left his true origin a mystery. But, then I have to ask, what was the point of this movie?

Seeing Joker really bummed me out, because I feel like all my friends are looking at one of those pictures where you have to un-focus your eyes to see a sailboat, but all I see is a poor character study for a character I love.

I got this from the production notes: “No, this is not the Gotham, nor the Joker, one would recognize from 80 years of established storytelling depicted on the page or screen.”

I think that’s a problem. I could have overlooked it if say Fleck/Joker got funnier. Like, that would have been cool. After each kill he gets funnier and funnier, as he becomes freer and freer to express himself without the need for any mask of fear. That would be interesting, right?

The Joker is supposed to be funny! So, why wasn’t I laughing?

If it is surmised that the Joker’s origin story is multiple-choice, I choose to ignore this one. But, if you want to treat it as the gospel according to Phillips and Silver, so be it. I am not trying to change your mind here, and I don’t expect you to change mine, either.