Don't be SHEEP

Rating: 1/10 (14 October 2019)

I don't write a lot of reviews but I felt compelled to do this if only just to put in writing the thoughts in my head..that apparently are a lot different from the thoughts in quite a few other people's heads when it comes to the perception of this movie.
First, in order for you to understand mine or anybody else's critique of this movie, you absolutely need to have seen all of the following movies:
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho
King of Comedy
Fight Club
Taxi Driver
Dark Knight Trilogy
Dog Day Afternoon
So let's do a somewhat categorized approach beginning with the obvious....
Acting: JP does a great job purely as an immersive method actor. He gives it his all and for that he deserves accolades. The few areas where he falters with overacting are actually the fault of the director and the editor for keeping those scenes in, since the scenes itself were repetitive and could have been taken out. The other actors do their job competently. Wait, there were other actors? Yes, there were ! Plenty of poorly written, poorly characterised shell characters that gave the artists no real scope to perform given that their combined screen time was 10%! DeNiro was wasted completely.
Casting: Just because JP did a stellar job does not means he was ideal for the role. Sure, if we take the 'Joker' aspect of it away, then he fits perfectly as a traumatized, declining man. But this is a JOKER origin story, and for THAT, Joaquin is too old! The timelines just don't make sense. The young Bruce Wayne as shown will become Batman after a good 20 years (remember Bruce was a successful older business tycoon before he became Batman) So by that time, this upper-middle aged Joker will be in his 70s? Come on now.
Zazie yas potential but was not given much to do. She did a good job. A legend like DeNiro should have never accepted such a poorly etched caricature role of Murray Franklin.
Character development: Whoa. All the sheep are talking about this and how 'masterful' it was. Look at the movies I have listed above and you will see how much has been copied from them in bits and pieces and jumbled together. Do people forget that at the very start of the movie he was mentally unstable and on seven medications? So his decline from that into a psychotic killer isnt that steep.
The inaccuracies are plenty as well.
Yes, a person can decline in morality, social adaptibility, schizophrenia etc.... however, a person CANNOT suddenly become MORE intelligent. So how does this person who is depicted as a bumbling fool continuously evolve into a sophisticated well-planned killer and eventually become into the character known as the Joker who was a masterful villain?
The laugh: The real Joker is supposed to laugh because he is a cruel and vicious monster and he laughs at his own jokes which are actually quite witty and also laughs at death and the misery he is causing, INTENTIONALLY!! The Joker in this movie laughs because he has a mental disorder and laughs involuntarily?? What the hell.? That deviation alone should make the movie ineligible to be called Joker ..from DC comics. It's simply NOT true to the character.
Story and script flaws : Some already mentioned above. No matter what the lack of funding, patients with mental disorders never ever have their medications taken away, no matter which department shuts down. This has been the case for decades. Even less wealthy countries dont do that.
How does a guy give him a loaded gun for free to protect himself and then screw him over just like that?
Music: Some the older songs were cleverly placed. The score was excellent in its quality however the placement of the music was highly manipulative in order to create a faux dark snd suspeseful aura. If I show you a video of starving children and play melancholy piano violin pieces in the background, you will cry too! Emotional manipulation through clever musical score placement is an old, old trick but the shameless overuse of it in this movie was akin to 70's shock horror flicks.
Direction: All over the place. Todd Philips is trying to be Hitchcock, Scorcese, and Nolan combined and he is not even remotely close to any of them. He steals heavily from their styles but whenever someone does that it almost always creates botched pacing and repetitiveness of scenes, and oh yeah, there is plenty of that.
Story: There is no real plot or story. The key turning points are weak. Even IF for the sake of argument the government takes the medications away from a person with a mental disorder, uh...hello, that person will get worse and out of control, but in this movie he gets smarter and more cunning and calculated? Not possible! The link to Thomas Wayne as his dad was a cheap shot. And how convenient of him to find such a properly thought out letter from his mom who is supposed to be crazy but wrote this very sensible letter that is of such importance, and then forgot to mail it! Haha I was rolling my eyes so hard my eyeballs hurt.
The so-called 'social commentary' : Contrived and oh-so #fake anti-capitalist message. Oh, those rich people behind their iron gates are oh so bad. Boo hoo.. let's protest and riot and life will be so much better! What a sad attempt at cashing in on anti-Trump sentiment. And Oh, the irony. Rich people are bad but thank you Sheep, we are gonna cash out big on this movie... You want to see a real social commentary far far ahead of it's time? Watch The Truman Show.
The sad pathetic irony of the causes of this 'unrest' is sickening. Oh look at this guy. Living in an American city, has an apartment, has free medical care, has A JOB..how many people in the world would die just to have that! But oh look at him, he gets bullied, beat up a bit, (rightfully) fired from a job..(but could have easily worked for a fast food or cafe till his comedian act worked)....but oh no no no, THIS is the limit! Down with the rich, let's kill em all. Let people pay their hard earned money to watch this, while we laugh all the way to the bank and the truly poor people in the world be like 'wtf just happened?'.
Marketing and hype: Wow. I mean really wow. This is a modern day epic example of socially manipulated and engineered mass-hype opinion manipulation. Word of mouth is sometimes beneficial, sometimes not. Remember, gossip and rumors also are a form of Word of mouth. When five of your friends say that a film is a masterpiece, most are going to say that they thought so too, for fear of being ridiculed as someone who is not savvy enough to understand such 'deep' movies.
The other thing is that the comic theme will draw a relatively younger audience as well, many of whom have not seen the above listed movies to catch what I call plagiarism (but if he wants to call it a tribute, even then it's a botched one.) And these folks will flood social media with hyperbole terminology. Epic. Genius. Masterpiece. Legendary. Achivement...yawn, did I miss any?
And so on and on the hype train will go till we are past the Oscars and award season of fake oohs and aaahs and speeches about this pseudo-deep movie. JP should get the award mainly for effort and because he has poor competition this year, but that's about it as far as deserving-ness.
Many have already questioned how this movie had literally thousands of rated 10 reviews on this site even before its premiere? Hmm....I say hmm..
But whatever. If that's the way the modern game is played then fine. It is ultimately up to the people.
As Shakespeare should have said, "To be or not to be Sheep, that is the question"