Cinematography, art direction, and the performance of Phoenix are the draws here; the story is so derivative, drawn out, empty, and vapid that it drags the film's biggest faul

Rating: 6/10 (7 October 2019)

After his big surprise win in Venice, a big splash (and some backlash) in Toronto, a storm (in a teacup) of opinion on social media, self-generating fear of cinema violence and even an incel insurrection, Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Todd Phillips of The Hangover, arrives at a resounding "hm" on our screens. Indeed, if you've seen both Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, there's really nothing for you, as Joker doesn't even update their concerns for our own troubled age, aping those movies and squatting between them in 1980.
Cinematography, art direction, and the performance of Phoenix are the draws here; the story is so derivative, drawn out, empty, and vapid that it drags the film's biggest fault. There was wit and style in Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy; Joker has no wit and his style is stolen. His tale of a poor down-trodden urban comedian descending into violence has often been told, with minor variations, and resonance to real-life events, most specifically to Bernhard Goetz's "subway vigilante," comes with no insight. Ugliness is just for its own sake on display here.
This film's best takeaway is as a set-up for a future Batman (like we need another one).The final scenes are suitably baroque, appropriate to the origin story of the Joker as being operatically linked to the story of Bruce Wayne; try as Phillips, his marketing team, and everybody else at Warner Bros. may have to deny it, this is just another comic book movie, in a darker key than usual.