Joker is laugh out loud funny for how serious it takes itself as a film.
Sure, in contrast with most superhero/comic book adaptations, the grim violence throughout is a breathe of fresh air, and yes, this is a mainstream movie that (meekly, if not evasively) depicts the crises of capitalism. Yet the provocative rush slows to a flattened moral relativism by the end of it all.
I had put off watching this film given the circle-jerk discourse that surrounded it, and I don't regret that decision. Joaquin Phoenix is easily the best thing about Joker. The apathetic humanization of mental illness, the worst.
