[I]t serves as a canvas for Phoenix, who goes to strenuous lengths to deliver a performance of operatic bombast. Alarmingly emaciated, affecting a maniacal laugh that Arthur barks out when he’s scared or angry or confused, he delivers a self-consciously larger-than-life performance in a role that simply doesn’t warrant the gravitas afforded to it by fans and filmmakers alike. “Joker” is, finally, so monotonously grandiose and full of its own pretensions that it winds up feeling puny and predictable. Like the anti-hero at its center, it’s a movie trying so hard to be capital-b Big that it can’t help looking small.
It’s hard to say if the muddle “Joker” makes of itself arises from confusion or cowardice, but the result is less a depiction of nihilism than a story about nothing. The look and the sound — cinematography by Lawrence Sher, cello-heavy score by Hildur Gudnadottir — connote gravity and depth, but the movie is weightless and shallow. It isn’t any fun, and it can’t be taken seriously. Is that the joke?
The storyline in and of itself is not a total miss. But once the movie starts lifting shots from “A Clockwork Orange” (and yes, Phillips and company got Warners to let them use the Saul Bass studio logo for the opening credits, in white on red, yet) you know its priorities are less in entertainment than in generating self-importance. As social commentary, “Joker” is pernicious garbage. But besides the wacky pleasures of Phoenix’s performance, it also displays some major movie studio core competencies, in a not dissimilar way to what “A Star Is Born” presented last year. (Bradley Cooper is a producer.) The supporting players, including Glenn Fleshler and Brian Tyree Henry, bring added value to their scenes, and the whole thing feels like a movie.
I’m not a cinema buff, but these reviews have me anxious to see Scorcese’s “King of Comedy.” And Glenn Kenny knows how to pussy-foot.