No Joke

Rating: 1/10 (18 January 2020)

I'm dumbfounded this film gets such a high IMDB rating.
If this was meant to be some kind of social commentary on the ravages of mental illness, it could have been done without hijacking one of the most colorful characters in the Batman comic book genre.
Viewers are held hostage to two hours of somber, relentless depression, murder, and mayhem. There are endless shots of a solitary, anguished Joaquin Phoenix, which get pretty monotonous.
In a nutshell: adopted boy suffers brain damage from a brutal father, lives with a sick mentally ill mother, and, after getting beat-up by street hooligans, builds a self-pitying clown alter-ego that's going to hold up a mirror to a dismissive society. *Yawn*
Of all the actors who have played Joker, Heath Ledger got the right balance of being a scary, crazed, murderous, diabolically clever sociopath who could go toe-to-toe with Batman. The pathetic, hapless Phoenix character lacks all of that persona.
Yes, Phoenix does an outstanding performance worthy of an Oscar. But that alone doesn't save a film that is a boring flop because it is monotone, dark, dour, and mostly pointless.