THB #601: Joker 2 Ambivalence

I can’t really argue with people who hate this movie. I see what they see.

But in the third act of the movie, I felt like I suddenly saw the light, down a narrow tunnel, of what Todd Phillips and Scott Silver were trying to do. It started to make some real sense to me… which is to say that most of the first two acts of avoiding getting to it were that much more infuriating.

The first thing that, having seen the film, slapped me in the face as hard as Joker himself might, is that it is NOT a 2-hander. Lady Gaga’s Lee Quinzel is not the co-star of the movie. It is easy to imagine this character matching up with Arthur Fleck and delivering a really fun, dark movie. But that is not what they made. It feels a lot more like a movie in which Lee Quinzel was one of the many significant but secondary supporting characters whose position in the film expanded when they decided to hire a star for the role instead of - with enormous respect - someone at the level of Catherine Keener or Brendan Glees…