I really don't understand.

Rating: 1/10 (11 November 2019)

Joaquin Phoenix is good. The directing is pretty good. The writing is absolutely awful. This movie is trying so hard to be relevant and to have a 'message' that it just throws a jumbled mess of quasi-commentary at you hoping something will stick. It is completely unclear what exactly writer/director Todd Phillips is actually trying to say, if anything. Is Joker a hero of the resistance or is he an incel? Does he go crazy because he's mentally ill or because people are mean to him? Both rich people and poor people are horrible to Joker so what exactly is the class commentary? It's also confusing how Robert De Niro when this movie is clearly ripping off Taxi Driver in many ways, also with a little Mr. Robot thrown in. There's also a subplot with a neighbor that is so incredibly stupid and pointless, which actually has no bearing on the story whatsoever. The movie is also just listless and boring throughout much of it. A movie can be slow-paced without it being boring if interesting things are happening that are driving the plot towards it's conclusion. The only thing driving the story in this movie is knowing that he's going to become joker at some points, not anything that actually happens in the movie. The movie also spends like 5 minutes making fun of a little person for no clear reason. Also for people saying that this movie does a good job saying why you should be nicer to people especially if they're lonely or have mental health issues: firstly you shouldn't need a movie like this to be nice to people, secondly you can make a movie like that where the lonely/mentally ill person doesn't become a murderer since mentally ill people are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of crime, and thirdly if you want a movie showing why you need to empathize with criminals why not movies about all the people of color who have been victims of mass incarceration and were locked up on nonviolent charges instead of a movie about a white male becoming a mass murderer. This movie is terrible.