The People's Joker

I described this to friends as "like a Tim & Eric sketch with a heart" but that doesn't leave a very good taste in my mouth. But I also feel like I could argue with myself how to define this movie practically forever, because it is so much, all the time.

It's often strange, chaotic, a little uncomfortable, but also really funny and ultimately heartfelt. The kind of movie that couldn't have been made (or nobody would be ready for in this format) 10 years ago.

I've seen several reviews from friends-of-friends and I still don't feel like I knew what I was getting into. But, man, what a heck of a thing.

So I'm going to give everyone a full disclosure with this - I am not really into superhero movies. I don't generally dislike them, however what I dislike about the majority is it's either Joss Whedon style cracks at the expense of a sincere take on the story OR Zack Snyder style "I WANNA BE DARK!" edgy that it goes beyond the point of seriousness. The thing is I don't think it's so hard to tell a story that both can be a serious take on the characters AND ridiculous enough to be a fun ride. Also both are full of characters that are homework assignments for people who don't know who these people are and...the idea of "follow the brand that made the movie" ALWAYS sounds like the most boring way to actually engage with the way a movie is made.

This movie...is NOT a serious take on the story or characters. More it's a parody movie which kind of sort of retells the story of Joker (2019) but with a transfemale protagonist and director. There is a lot that gets reshaped to fit the needs of what that premise means for the story but if you want a "general gist" - that's it.

Now there are a lot of comic book references in this movie but I don't think it's impossible for someone to like this movie who has no idea who half the characters or scenes being parodied are. I do find that one scene that I recognized as being parodied and was objectively better here is the scene in Joker (2019) where he dances down the stairs. In this movie that scene is recreated but they replace Gary Glitter with a parody of the Prince song that played in the museum scene in the '89 Batman movie (insert "I did see these movies as a kid" disclaimer here). Cultural erasure of Gary Glitter will never be a bad thing to me.

Now a lot of what I've seen online in relation to this movie is people going in expecting this to be AS polished as the Hollywood stuff and getting disappointed (also slurs and people simping over companies keeping IP rights from the public forever, but I want to keep on track). You will not get that. The visuals rely on character identities getting swapped out a lot (people become 2D drawings, dolls, some characters are 3D animations that are uncanny valley). The amount of work that goes into animation like that suggests to me that the visual style of this movie being so disjointed is very deliberate.

So, if I don't like the genre and admit this movie can be pretty visually disjointed, why am I giving this movie a pass? Honestly because this movie isn't REALLY about comic book characters. It uses that as coding. "This person was a villain" "this person was a hero" and...deconstructing the idea of both. The movie outright dismisses the idea that any one person is a complete hero or a total villain. It's more a story of what we bring to it. Now that might not be very deep to some but my experience of comic book movies is they almost never bring that up. So it was nice to see that and I think it's worth a point for "just because I've heard it doesn't mean everyone else has or that people don't need to hear this."

Now I've talked serious for a bit, what about the "parody" aspect? I'll be honest in that it did get a few decent laughs out of me here and there. Now that's not going to be a sell for everyone as humour is very subjective and my sense of humour is NOT the kind that's applicable to everyone. So the best I can do is try to deconstruct some of the jokes but I don't really want to explain "Why did the clown jump into a vat of feminizing hormones at a chemical storage plant? Because gender health is inaccessible, even in comic book movies" Just...that made me laugh.

So, yeah. I know not everyone seemed to enjoy this but I think it's a cool little film.

Using Batman characters and various other Gotham City-related namedrops (within the realm of Fair Use, of course; this is decidedly not an official DC release) to tell the story of a trans awakening and trans visibility, Vera Drew's The People's Joker is a mostly funny movie that also somehow works whenever it is unfunny.

Reviewers are not unjustified to use the term "Adult Swim coded". This rings true of the cast (Tim Heidecker and David Liebe Hart appear; even Drew herself has edited a number of Adult Swim shows), the sometimes deliberately awkward acting, and the general quality of the effects, with CGI shots that look like something you would see in the days of M. Dot Strange and Jimmy ScreamerClauz. But the artist that this film truly lauds is Joel Schumacher; the film is dedicated to his memory (alongside Drew's mother) and sometimes recalls his mostly reviled Batman films -- the ones that the Internet tastemakers of the late 2000s called some of the worst pictures ever made.

Video essayist Kyle Kallgren argued that most of the stuff that the Internet has categorized as "cringe" can be reduced to queer expression; a way to bully queerness for simply expressing itself in ways that many aren't used to. The People's Joker, in Kallgren's words, has "defeated cringe". In doing so, I guess, it also suggests that any problems Gen X/Gen Y nerds may have had with Batman & Robin is really a matter of not understanding a queer way of making art. (Recall that the film was released in the same era when the mere mention of trans people was typically a lead-in to a vomit joke.) Well, they understood that the shots of Clooney's leather-clad keister may have been put in because that's the sort of image Schumacher enjoys, but calling Batman & Robin "gay" as an insult isn't to understand why it looks, sounds, and feels the way it does.

What I'll tell you for certain is that The People's Joker is a highly entertaining ride with plenty of personality and wit. A mutual on Twitter argued that its color schemes, occasional "old television" aesthetics, and trans themes make it fit for a double bill with I Saw the TV Glow, but I'm not sure if the tonal shifts of such a movie night would work for everyone. You do you.

I was intrigued by the inclusion of Bob Odenkirk, Tim Heidecker, and Scott Aukerman in this movie, but was let down so bad. Vera Drew did work on On Cinema at the Cinema and Comedy Bang Bang, so I thought this would be interesting. I feel misled by a lot of the promotions for this movie. What put me off was the lack of sets, the cheesy acting, and the non-funny storyline. It's mostly a monologue about the hardships of being trans. I understand the lifestyle of a transgender person is hard, but this was severely wrongly marketed as a film that would appeal to audiences who wanted to see comedy and comic book action. It had neither. The comedians were horrible, to put it lightly, and the unsatisfactory comic book action was mostly done with bad animation and/or action figure stop motion. It was nauseatingly bad. I don't even think it qualifies as comic book knowledge with the references; it was more like pop culture knowledge. While I don't think comic books are that cool to begin with (I like the ones from the 40s and 50s the most), this movie made them seem lamer. Bob Odenkirk, Tim Heidecker, and Scott Aukerman are voice-only in tiny, miniscule parts. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone except trans people who might love comic book movies. The editing was alright, and the energy of some of the lead actors was alright, but everything else was terrible.

The presentation: I suppose I MOSTLY feel duped because I paid for a ticket to watch something that I probably should have watched on YouTube. I don't think that people shouldn't make movies just because they don't have the funds for it, but I *do* feel like I can judge it on its quality if it chooses to cut corners. The green screen looks terrible, and this is barely "directed." Conversations are shot super close up, and the actors fall out of frame frequently. The effects look like Red Letter Media videos when Mr. Plinkett's house was floating at the bottom of the ocean. I don't even really feel like calling this a movie.

The DC property: I suppose if it stripped all of the IP away, some might still frame it as a "Joker origin story." But I still don't believe that the solution was to lean into it. It undercuts its trans journey message with...superhero fiction. This movie wants you to take it seriously and as a joke at the same time. And as for the boldness of copyright infringement, "Escape from Tomorrow" is also, similarly, not good, despite its ballsiness to try to slip it by Disney.

Only the actors and quick, cutaway gags are worth mentioning.