Immature and pretentious

Rating: 4/10 (15 November 2019)

As someone who has never been interested in DC films, "Joker" was never something I was particularly looking forward to. I would like to start this sentence with "however" but I'm afraid that is not the case. "Joker" is trying to catch sharks with bait that could merely catch a trout; the character arc that "Joker" try's to achieve would have possibly worked with anyone other than a DC comic book villain. It is hard to take the message in this film seriously when considering the context and who "Joker" is aimed at. What I'm trying to say is that "Joker" is a bit of a joke, it takes itself too seriously and unfortunately and I cannot help but laugh at the people who say it is a modern day masterpiece.
The film opens with "Joker" acting bizarre and I cannot help but think that he's already lost the plot at this point: the opening scene. Yes you could argue that this is to indicate that he is an "outsider" not simply insane, however, after watching him brutally murder several men in the first half of the film I find this hard to believe. It appears that Joker is insane from the start so I then begin to ask myself what's the point of this film? The change we see in the main character is more of slight curve than a "character arc" and there is little/ no change in tone throughout.
"Joker" is incredibly unclear in its intentions and I frankly find it a struggle to get through, not because of the "edgy" violence but because the film is simply embarrassing compared to its many inspirations. If you take "King of Comedy" and take out all the good bits and replace these with scenes of violence, you will get something very similar to "joker". I was expecting something at least original from this film in spite of its incredible reviews but I suppose that was wishful thinking.
I find psychological films simply fascinating because of their uniquely twisted characters, a great example of this is the great satirical character of Patrick Bateman from "American Psycho" who is portrayed in a very intriguing way that chills the viewer. "Joker" however, is a pretentious portrayal of a character with not much depth: he is just the joker. The same joker we saw in the dark knight, who's beauty lay in the ambiguity; we didn't need "Joker" to develop on this.