Disappointing as the origin of Joker

Rating: 7/10 (24 October 2019)

The movie lost me when they start with Arthur as a mental patient. He is a mentally unstable person on seven medications and with an uncontrollable laugh! To be honest this laughter concept was the show stopper for me. The Joker (let alone heath ledger, this is valid for every possible DC comic Joker) laugh because he is cruel, crazy, kind of a monster, master manipulator, mocking the society and order. The Joker I can imagine, laughs at a witty joke or double meaning sentence or he gets fun creating an anarchy. The real Joker laugh is not a laugh where he has no control over it, or he has no sense of humor kind of stuff! Real Joker is smart and he CAN laugh intentionally. At the very first occurrence of Arthur's involuntary laughter, I just stopped to take the movie seriously as a Joker.
Next, there is no character development. The movie focuses to Arthur for almost 95% of the time. There is hardly any description about the society (yes, the set was dark and gloomy like any other average movie, but that doesn't depict the time, except some cliche rich-poor differences). Not a single other character got any attention. Fine, It's Joker, and they focused only a single person Arthur. Yet, for Arthur, there was no development. He was on seven medication, lost job, got financial cut-off for his medicine, killed few people accidentally and become criminal minded. He outburst when he found his mother was also a mental patient and the reason of his all ill-fates. Ok, this justifies his being a criminal and get aviated from his morals. But, this is not enough for him to be THE JOKER. A mental patient without medicine becomes dumb, out of mind and mostly dysfunctional. He does not suddenly become smart enough to plan and manipulate people (let alone bat man). Even, they did not portray a mentally ill person properly. There was exaggerated melodrama on what goes on with in the mind of a mentally ill person. Anyway, the reason for an idiot, insecure, previously non-violent become an intelligent master manipulator, sophisticated well-planned killer was not there.
Phoenix's acting as a Joker was good, but there were few scenes where it seems too much overacting and unnecessary. For example, his dance moves - those are unnecessary. Yes, they are good to watch and he did them well, but they have zero relation with the plot/environment and they convey zero meaning. The director put them there just because they look crazy. Heath Ledger's joker was effortless, his acting was just natural, audience hardly felt it was an acting. Phoenix was good, but you can see the strains and efforts he puts in to the character.
About the plot, there are lot's of loopholes. Arthur's mom is a mental patient too. There is no reason for her to write such a meaning full complete letter and the forget to post it just to find Arthur the letter. The period where there was a chance for Joker being the step-brother of Batman was really creepy. In comics, Thomas Wayne was actually careful about Gotham. But here, they portrayed him as the main reason behind Gotham's chaos - rich vs poor riot. His stand for the riches and view point was just one dimensional. It's not clear why the colleague will give Arthur a gun? That colleague seems to care about him, but later, he tried to push him in front of a bus; weird! Joker even had a sense of good and bad. He killed the colleague who did bad to him and spared the midget one because he was always good to him - certainly not a Joker character. Yes, if you remove DC and the name Joker from the movie, make it just and ordinary movie where a mental patient goes through some unfortunate events and eventually does some criminal act, then this is a good one. But, this is certainly not that movie, where an individual turns into a JOKER.