Joker

Well, you have to give Todd Phillips credit for something. Not for taking the superhero movie in a new direction, mind you (at least not any good one). Aside from a few shared names, Joker’s connections to its source material are so few that it feels like it's embarrassed of its DC Comics origins, a notion the writer-director-producer has done little to contradict in his public statements about the picture.

What Phillips has given us is the genre’s first unabashed piece of Oscar bait, aiming to beat Marvel to being the first Best Picture-winner after Black Panther broke the dam by being nominated just this year. Thus, Joker not only removes all the fun and fantastical “comic” elements to make it respectable enough for the Academy, but it’s also a showcase for a performance by an actor (that’d be Joaquin Phoenix) who’s long been acclaimed but so far hasn’t won an Academy Award (in other words, is “due”). But to that end, Phillips has concocted a uniquely awful type of awards-panderer where the pretentiousness crosses the line into hubris, matched by an incompetence that turns it from middling to rancid.

Instead of hitting the tropes Oscar voters like, the film opts to win praise by just copying movies critics already liked. The early 80s crime-ridden Gotham City merely evokes the hellish New York of Taxi Driver, but whole scenes are lifted from The King of Comedy (then taken to the obvious and bloody extreme for those who couldn’t grasp the effective subtlety of Martin Scorsese’s film). The aerial shots of Gotham cityscapes set to Hildur Guðnadóttir’s (good) score recall the urban realism and Hans Zimmer compositions of Christopher Nolan’s far superior Dark Knight trilogy. And as Phoenix's disaffected Arthur Fleck descends from party clown and wannabe standup comic into homicidal maniac, the narrative leaves no mentally ill villain trope unturned, and the ones meant to be twists or shocking are obvious from the outset.

Phoenix, to his credit, acts. In one of the very few original touches that works, this Joker is given an affectation that causes uncontrollable laughter regardless of the situation. In scenes where this plays a part, he’s so believable it’s painful. But like nearly every other idea, original or ripped-off, this only comes up sporadically at convenient points in the plot. In-between, Phoenix is merely elevating every movie bad guy stereotype of mental illness, from hallucinatory schizophrenics (or at least the misunderstood conditions movies file under “schizophrenia”) to internal-monologuing lone wolves. Despite only having a problematic Hollywood understanding of mental illness, the tone suggests the filmmakers truly believe they're providing a genuine and accurate portrait of it (albeit, tucked inside a supervillain origin story, however distanced from its comic book roots it may be). It’s totally uninformed, often insensitive, and when it's not unpleasant, it's just tedious. 

Joker is a movie that takes itself so seriously but doesn’t know what it’s talking about. Its attempts to say something about the times we live in—the film features a mass protest movement like Occupy with clown masks instead of Guy Fawkes, and a Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen) who’s vaguely Trump-like—are a mishmash of right and left that not so much seeks some milquetoast middle ground as betrays a lack of understanding of current events (a problem shared by War Dogs, Phillips’ last semiserious attempt to go topical). It mistakes surface level mention of issues and ideas as depth, ugliness as realism, and misery as compelling drama. And the final nail in the coffin: the attempts at dark comedy land with a thud.