Disappointing and Out of Character

Rating: 2/10 (6 October 2019)

After sitting through more trailers than ever before, I was hopeful that the Joker movie would give me a fun insight into the anarchy famed prince of crime. Instead, I sat through two hours of boredom and dissatisfaction discussing with my company more than once if we should leave the theatre. Foremost, this movie demonizes mentally ill individuals, who are statistically more likely to be victims of violent crime than to commit them. And while you can argue that the Joker has always been an unhinged character, I have never seen the character so blatantly portrayed as incapable and schizophrenic. There is a lack of mastermind and a focus on illness to the point where the main character actually writes out "mental illness" and it is highlighted in frame. The Joker in this movie could never face a Batman, and yet, he comes face to face with Bruce Wayne so many years before becoming his arch nemesis in a juvenile and disturbing way, inasmuch that he is inadvertently responsible for the death of the Wayne parents in the most contrived and convoluted way possible. Although in this narrative you feel they deserve it as they are seen as nothing but Jeff Bezos/Donald Trump (the movie tries very hard to parallel our political climate in a way that is incoherent and distressing) stand ins. There is also a noticeable absence of the traditional flair that one would attribute to anything Joker related. I have this film two stars. One for Phoenix's outstanding ability to act so well that I felt pity, and ultimately disgust for the main character (although the disgust could be more from how much I disliked the film). And the second for a short scene wherein the Joker empties his entire refrigerator to climb in and enjoy sitting in the darkness which is exactly what I would have preferred to watching the film. Lastly, because of the recent climate and the shooting in Colorado, this film made me feel unsafe. At one point during a quiet scene the theatre door opened and every head turned in alarm. The person who was responsible for Colorado is the exact type of person this was made for... people looking for the world to take pity on them because they feel invisible. And this film will vindicate these feelings because it is not until the end that we see this "hero" is nothing more than an unreliable narrator. I deeply love DC, but this film fell flat, felt boring, and most importantly for me was out of character for what could truly have been a deep and meaningful backstory.