Clown Prince of Comedy

Rating: 4/10 (13 November 2019)

What a god awful mess.
I've given this a 4 because a drama costing 55 million should be a damn sight better, had "joker" not been the premise of this movie I would have given it a higher rating, I'll explain, this is not the DC Joker, this is a story of a mentally ill man, borderline sociopathic and living the most drab & dreary life possible who then descends into madness & becomes a full psychopath, we get barely any build up or development of this asides from "Arthur" being beaten up by a bunch of kids then by a trio of drunk yuppies but we get endless scenes of him agonising over his boring dreary life, now as is its good but nothing more than that, Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant & will most definitely get the Oscar for his performance but this movie is then spoiled by the pointless references & inclusions of the Wayne family, its just enough tidbits thrown in to try to authenticate it as existing in the batman universe, there isn't homeless people shuffling around the streets to show how bad life is, no yuppies partying showing how good life is for the elite, nothing to show the huge chase between the rich & the poor & so nothing to justify the rioting in the streets.
all these reviews praising it for it being dark & dreary, bleak & depressing, what is wrong with these people, this is not a tour de force of cinema, all of you stop with the "oh this is like real life" "best DC movie ever" the story is completely garbage, the origin of the joker, total BS.
so basically this is "The king of comedy" story line with senseless murders & pointless riots & zero enjoyment.
So Todd Phillips states "this is not the joker you know" he is definitely right with that but if this is his version of the joker separate from the comics or previous films then why include the Wayne family & why include an iconic scene from the comics which was also the scene recreated in the Tim Burton Batman movie.
The one thing that made the joker character so interesting was his mystery, Tim Burton almost ruined that with his brief origin of the joker, Jared leto almost ruined the character with his sleazy portrayal but Christopher Nolan's idea to keep the jokers origin a mystery & just allow heath ledger to develop the character his way was shear genius.
This film would have been better had it left out all the joker references, it would have stood out on its own, but to pass this off as the origin of the joker is quite simply the joke itself, shame on all of you involved, when you take such an iconic character you have an obligation to do the character justice & you failed, this film only stands out because of the incredible performance of its star