Tread Carefully.. You May Be Disappointed

Rating: 7/10 (9 October 2019)

Oh boy, I'm going to get crucified for this but I have to be honest..
I did not "love" it. I am not falling "heels over head" in love with it. And for good reasons. Even the most praised aspects of it, the top being Joaquin Phoenix's acting, did not quite impress me the way it impressed most people..
The predictability of the story and the possible reasons they give to explain Joker's madness and why he is the way he is do not justify the existence of this film. They're quite cliche and explained in too much detail with too much justification for their own good.
At times, he came off not as a mentally ill guy but as a whiny loser. A crazy person could be both obviously but Joker was never supposed to be that. I wouldn't mind if this film wasn't about The Joker but taking The Joker and reducing him to that does not do anything good for his reputation as this great character.
Some of our awaam is even rooting for this version of the character and is talking about him like some kind of hero? I mean what the hell. This movie focuses too much on showing us Arthur's point of view and justifying it. And for that reason, it becomes dangerous. I was getting genuinely concerned about how this movie was portraying Arthur's mental illness and how it could inspire people to do something horrible and use this film as the basis ..
People will tell me "you didn't understand this, you didn't understand that". Look I know all about the theories and I know you can interpret this film in different ways but the way I saw it, the film was trying to sell a particular vision and I saw it as an .. okay film that felt disturbing at times because it felt too real in some of the more violent scenes and for that I am concerned about the influence of this film on people's mindset.. I really hope it doesn't trigger anyone into committing anything heinous ..
Otherwise, it has competent cinematography and how the film was structured wasn't bad but the material was lacking. I feel like there didn't need to be a Joker origin film but here it is and I don't know what to do with it..
I tried really hard to love it but I just didn't.. And that's not my fault.. I would give it a 7.0/10 :/ could've been a 6.8/10 but some of the better parts saved it from falling down to a 6