The People's Joker

Wow – what can one say about this wild, woolly, wigged-out spoof of superhero movies in which the protagonist is an edgy, crusading transgender harlequin comedian fighting the power structure of a corrupt, narrow-minded society? That description alone is pretty wacky in itself, but, as the finished product shows, its depiction on screen is even more bizarre and outrageous. Writer-actor-director Vera Drew’s debut feature is simultaneously an exercise in the outlandish that’s part high camp, part in-your-face irreverence, part alternative sexuality manifesto and part love letter to the Batman mythology turned on its ear. This story of a small-town boy’s transgender awakening as a springboard to finding a new life in the wilds of Gotham City’s underground comedy scene tells an off-the-wall, often-frenetically paced, sometimes-sentimental tale that defies conventional classification. Its inventive mix of live action, motion capture photography and animation serves up a unique viewing experience unlike anything most audiences have ever seen, including among most seasoned cinephiles. It also delivers some positively scathing one-liners and wicked sight gags that will leave many thinking “I can’t believe they just did that!” Collectively, it makes for the kind of picture that will likely earn this production cult movie status and a guaranteed spot on midnight show movie lineups. Despite its many inspired cinematic innovations, however, the narrative occasionally tends toward overzealous self-indulgence and cryptic ideologies that appear to be employed simply to carry the story forward, making for a production that seems to be trying too hard just to see how much of a stunned reaction it can get from the audience. It has also come under some scrutiny for pushing the limits of fair use issues and acceptable propriety boundaries, elements that raised the eyebrows of some critics and of those who created the source materials from which this work draws (but that have also subse...

The People's Joker (2022)

Directed by Vera Drew

Vera Drew's The People's Joker is creatively brilliant with a moving narrative, and she proves you don't need a multimillion-dollar Hollywood budget to make an awesome film. Shot in five days for $25,000, with an army of volunteer animators and visual effects artists recruited through Drew's YouTube show, this DIY trans coming-of-age story wrapped in a Batman parody has more invention, heart, and genuine risk than anything Marvel or DC has produced in the last decade.

Drew plays Joker the Harlequin, telling an autobiographical story about growing up trans in the Midwest, coming to Gotham to pursue comedy, and discovering her identity through the worst relationship of her life with a character who looks suspiciously like Jared Leto's Joker. If I have any complaint, it's that the film is paced a tad too fast to catch all the nuances. But to be completely fair, I haven't watched one of those Hollywood, non-creative, comic book movies in many years, so was maybe contextually disadvantaged. Drew crams so much visual information, so many references, so many layers of meaning into every frame that you could watch it three times and still find new details.

The "anti-comedy" warehouse is hilarious, especially on a meta level. Joker performs in an underground space with other Batman villains doing edgy comedy in a world where laughter has been outlawed by the United Clown Bureau, a vicious parody of SNL and the Upright Citizens Brigade. The fact that Drew made this film on lunch money is itself meta anti-comedy. The People's Joker is an anti-superhero film, featuring queer and trans friends, anti-establishment in every frame. This is the revolution, not metaphorically but literally. This is what it looks like when artists seize the means of production from corporate overlords and make something that actually matters.

With the exception of maybe Deadpool, The People's Joker is the best superhero movie of this...