Poor choices doom confused Joker

Joaquin Phoenix in Joker. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

Little about Joker is truly remarkable besides Joaquin Phoenix's grueling performance in the eponymous role. Otherwise, the film is too wrapped up in social commentary to understand the topic of conversation. This film is lost in itself, selling itself to a disaffected group with a message as clear as mud. Joker is a mess, a tone-deaf, piece of work from a filmmaker trying to punch far above his weight class.

Joker stars Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, a lonely clown who lives with his delusional mother (Frances Conroy) and dreams of standing onstage with talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Stuck in a rut, Arthur is given a new look at life following an incident on a train, leading him down a path of self-discovery and into the atmosphere of single mother Sophie (Zazie Beetz) and wealthy Gotham magnate Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullen). As Arthur spirals into insanity and into his role as the Batman's greatest foe, he becomes an accidental symbol for a movement that will have immeasurable consequences on Gotham's future.

And it's all kind of dull. Phoenix is great in his role, but the character is not designed to be particularly engaging or interesting. Joker needs its star to be charismatic, to provide a reason why so many people devote their lives and livelihoods to a maniac. How the film explains it is a little too easy and a little too convenient, dashing the mystery from the character and scrubbing Joker's intelligence and dangerous spontaneity. Joker is a monster, yet the film's attempt to humanize him makes him predictable and simple, with nary a surprise to be seen. Instead, Arthur Fleck is a victim of an uncaring system, the kind of person who falls through every imaginable loophole until he finally snaps. Despite acts of cruelty and several moments of self-inflicted stupidity, Fleck is among the forgotten, a man abandoned by a system quickly tearing itself asunder. Even his first murder begins as an act of self defense that includes haphazard symbolic lighting effects because it seemed like something Scorsese would do. The sympathy belongs to a white man burdened by loneliness and the absence of a strong father figure. He is a victim because director Todd Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver view such a person deserving of sympathy while denying similar views for the women and people of color who populate this film. The biggest tragedy Joker depicts is society failing the poor white men, and the film never bothers to wonder why that is a problem.

Joker really wants to be one of those movies that has something important to say, but it's terrible at conveying anything with a modicum of clarity. This stems from Phillips and Silver lacking a clear perspective of what they want to convey with their film. This film wants to be taken so, so, so, seriously, screaming for somebody to hear the big important thing it has to say about how bad society is. Many movies like Falling Down, Taxi Driver, Fight Club, and a whole slew of others have done such messages before. Yet those films had clarity in their points and an understanding their protagonists are not decent human beings pushed too far, but delusional beings whose violent tendencies and bad choices make them more relatable than likable. Joker focuses so much on the societal failures it never engages with the faults of Arthur Fleck, painting his violent streaks with a sense of unearned catharsis.

The overarching issue is how far Phillips wanders out of his comfort area. He's a competent director within a certain genre, but is otherwise incapable of putting together a piece as complicated as Joker should be. It's clear he's seen the movies he's copying – tossing De Niro in as a talk show host is a clear nod to The King of Comedy – without understanding the message or the themes, let alone how to adequately light someone to reflect a destructive mental state. The films he wants to copy are subtle and pointed, never blaring out the message louder than it needs to be. Phillips doesn't do subtle, which infects the film score to a rather nasty degree. Joker is all over the place because its director cannot settle on what he wants his film to be. A good Joker film could happen, but it requires someone with greater talent than Phillips to do it.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 121 minutes

Genre: Drama

tl;dr

What Worked: Joaquin Phoenix

What Fell Short: Writing, directing, soundtrack, tone

What To Watch As Well: Taxi Driver, Fight Club

Robert De Niro has sunk to a new low

Zac Efron and Robert De Niro exert energy in "Dirty Grandpa." Image courtesy Lionsgate.

I have no idea why Robert De Niro chose to participate in “Dirty Grandpa.” I doubt very much that he needs a cash influx – being Robert De Niro creates access to choice roles not offered to the Burt Reynolds of the world. There is a chance De Niro just likes these types of films – he did star in multiple “Meet the Parents” flicks over the years – although his palpable boredom and sincere lack of effort on screen makes that a no. Maybe he just wanted to exchange lazy innuendo with Aubrey Plaza, which, really, is difficult to fault a person for doing at all. Whatever the reason may be, the result is a dreadful film that has one of the greatest cinematic figures repeatedly jamming his thumb up Zac Efron's butt and dropping a lot of discomfiting racist and homophobic humor because why not.

Before all of that happens though, De Niro's Dick Kelly is mourning the loss of his beloved wife, who died after a very long battle with cancer. Supposedly grief stricken, De Niro recruits his grandson Jason (Efron), a young lawyer at his father's (Dermot Mulroney) firm, to drive with him from Atlanta to Boca Raton Florida to play a little golf and bond. It’s worth nothing that this plan, for whatever reason, takes place a week before Efron's wedding to stereotypical controlling fiance Meredith (Julianne Hough).

De Niro’s plan gets derailed once he and Efron encounter college students Plaza (about a decade too old for this role, but whatever), Bradley (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, also a decade too old for his part) and Efron's former classmate/token love interest Shadia (Zoey Deutch, actually the appropriate age for her part) heading to Daytona Beach for spring break weekend.  De Niro really, really wants to spend some quality time with Plaza, and coerces Efron to head to the beach for a weekend of debauchery. There they encounter irascible drug dealer Pam (Jason Mantzoukas), LAX bros Cody and Brah (Jake Picking and Michael Hudson, respectively) and some morally squiffy cops (Mo Collins and Henry Zebrowski), among others. Such racism, along with shenanigans involving penises, drawings of penises, sexual harassment, drugs, booze, flexing, punching and everything else that happens during an average weekend in Florida, ensue.

Something “Dirty Grandpa” deserves credit for is delivering exactly what the previews and title promise; De Niro saying and doing filthy, disgusting things. For anyone who wants to see Jimmy Conway do such things, this is probably the best opportunity he or she will ever have to witness such things, regardless of how effective Jake LaMotta is at actually performing it. The answer to that remains to be determined; as mentioned above, De Niro really isn't putting in that much effort into this one – even his emotional scenes underwhelm – so he gets a begrudging incomplete. It is, however, fair to provide an “F” to the person who decided to cast young Vito Corleone as the comedic driving force for this film.

I'd say De Niro doesn't quite fit this type of film, but I'm not sure the filmmakers (director Dan Mazer and writer John Phillips) are up to the task of serving a proper film. The plot, which is trite and obvious, makes zero sense and stretches the limits of credulity frequently. There are also a number of weird plot holes that need filling in, most notably how Efron and Deutch could have taken a class together when the former is an established attorney and the latter hasn't graduated college. Add to that some noticeable continuity errors and frequent syncing issues with the audio, and you have yourself a rather lovely mess of a film.

A comedy can overcome such issues, although a movie does actually have to be funny to do so. I shouldn't say “Dirty Grandpa” is a dire film that acts as a sinkhole for jokes – humor is subjective after all – but  I can say whatever laughs are to be found in this film are based on stereotypes, sexual anatomy, De Niro, or some combination of the three. In other words, it's not very inventive, although neither is the depiction of women as, to put it uncomfortably bluntly, sluts, saints and shrews. “Dirty Grandpa” aims for the reliable lowest common denominator and strikes gold at the expense of social progress, the state of comedy, and De Niro's dignity, or at least what's left of it.

Rating: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 102 minutes

Genre: Comedy

Ask Away

Target audience: Anyone who wants to watch Robert De Niro curse wantonly.

Take the whole family?: An onslaught of junk shots makes this rather inappropriate for kids, so keep anyone below their mid teens at home.

Theater or Netflix?: Netflix and other streaming options only if you must.

What does work in 'Dirty Grandpa'?: A couple of jokes do land to bump it from miserable to just bad, and Jason Mantzoukas and Aubrey Plaza are both very game, even if the former's character belongs in a radically different film. Despite my reservations about this film, “Dirty Grandpa,” somehow, could've been a whole lot worse.

Watch this instead?: You're better served checking out a couple of movies featuring the stars of “Dirty Grandpa.” Both “Neighbors” (which has Mantzoukas and Zac Efron) and “The To Do List” (featuring Plaza) are silly, gross-out comedies, but they're smarter than expected and much better executed than this one.