Almost a great movie... but not

Rating: 7/10 (8 October 2019)

There's no doubt the design, photography and direction are superb, and the beginning and end of the film are great, but seriously, there's an entire hour in the middle of this film where very little happens. I have three main problems with The Joker: 1) whilst Phoenix is very good it feels to me like he reaches Â´full joker' way too early, leaving him nowhere to go and hence, his character arc is quite flat, 2) the Joker's mother is integral to his descent into mania yet she's given no meaningful screen time, with perhaps a dozen lines in the entire film. It would have been a much better film if their relationship was more fully explored. And 3) We know The Joker ends up being an arch nemesis of Batman as it's alluded to in the film, yet here he's portrayed as a bit of simpleton loser who it would be hard to believe could go on to be a master criminal. To me it didn't feel right.
Those three things plus an imaginary relationship, which in essence ended up being an, "... and then I woke up" device that was more annoying than clever, made The Joker not the great cinema experience it could have been. A pity really.