Overrated

Rating: 6/10 (9 October 2019)

Joaquin Phoenix deserves every bit of praise, but the problem was the plot and its lack of subtlety.
Here's poor Arthur Fleck getting beat up while doing his job. Yeah, you know where this is going. Now he's lost his job, killed 3 people on a train, and learns that his dad has been Thomas Wayne all along. As if life couldn't get worse, his "mother" just had a stroke. Scratch that, she's not his mother and T. Wayne isn't his dad - he was adopted and abused as a child. And now, with nothing left to love or lose, the world is laughing at him on television. That's really gotta tip him over the edge. Now it all makes sense. Amazing character development.
*sarcasm*
It's all very on the nose.
Joker would have been better off as an action/fast-paced crime movie, showing how Arthur Fleck rose to the top of Gotham's criminal underworld. They could have handled his character devlopment more subtly, while keeping us on the edge of our seats with an actual exciting story.
Instead it was one long montage of him being screwed over by everyone until he finally snapped. Very predictable and basic. Not the "deep" masterpiece it's being made out to be.
Had it been an average acting performance from another actor, the movie would probably be 6.5 or 7 on IMDb right now. The movie itself wasn't anything special except for the last 15 minutes. Its success rests entirely on Joaquin Phoenix's performance.