They’re all wetting their pants about Joker. The ‘film of the year’, five stars across the board, Golden Lion and all. Well, they’re wrong. It’s not even funny.
If you’re going to do a film about a clown you’d better throw in a few jokes; a few zingy one liners like Arnie delivered as Colonel John Matrix in the seminal Commando. But no, not a bean.
Instead we get Joaquin Phoenix moping around, doing depressing shit and living his depressing life. How can a man who works as a clown be so miserable?
The film tries to be deep and moves away from all the homoerotic spandex you usually get with these superhero things. You wouldn’t ever see John Matrix in spandex. He was a real man.
At least with other superhero films you get some big explosions at the end and some cool action sequences where all the good lads in spandex finally defeated the bad lads in spandex.
Not in Joker though. In Joker there’s a scene where Phoenix shoots a gun a few times, and another later one where he gets it out again. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo. It’s not even big. It’s the kind of gun Matrix would laugh at then snap in half.
In short: too much moping, not enough shooting.