The film makes reference to movies from around the drama’s era, such as the Death Wish films, The French Connection and maybe even Star Wars, but it’s more obviously a laborious and pointless homage to the Scorsese/De Niro classic The King of Comedy with a bit of Taxi Driver, which means that at various moments it’s a bit like The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, only not as good. Joker’s own criminal and serial-killer career bafflingly fizzles. After this, the film loses your interest, with tedious and forced material about Joker’s supposed triggering of an anti-capitalist, anti-rich movement with protesters dressing as clowns. The film holds your attention up until Joker’s terrible revenge bloodbath on the subway early on, perhaps intended to echo the notorious Bernhard Goetz shooting of 1984 - although Phillips prudently makes it a non-racist attack. There is great production design by Mark Friedberg, some tremendous period cityscape images by cinematographer Lawrence Sher, and a strong performance by Phoenix, though not his best - it is not as good as his appearance in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. Well, the casting of Phoenix indicates more clearly how sexy Joker is supposed to be. I wonder what Joker would be like with Galifianakis in the lead. Phillips has already directed a film featuring a brilliant unfunny-funny figure with learning difficulties: Alan in The Hangover, played by Zach Galifianakis, that strange dysfunctional figure who mispronounces the noun “retard”. One day, after the humiliation and despair become too much to bear, Arthur gets hold of a gun and discovers that his talent is not for comedy but violence. But he can only get a job as a clown in grinning makeup and floppy-toed shoes twirling an advertising banner outside a store, where he is bullied and beaten up by young thugs passing by. He has a crush on his single-mom neighbour Sophie (Zazie Beetz) and pines to be a comedian, hero-worshipping cheesy TV host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Poor Arthur has a neurological condition that means he is liable to break into screeching laughter at inopportune moments. Arthur is a former inpatient at a psychiatric facility but is now allowed to live with his elderly mother, Penny (Frances Conroy), in her scuzzy apartment. Joaquin Phoenix plays Arthur Fleck, a pathetic loser and loner in Gotham City, some time in the early 1980s. Last year we had Luca Guadagnino’s solemn version of Suspiria, and now it’s Joker, from director and co-writer Todd Phillips: a new origin myth for Batman’s most famous supervillain opponent. It emerges with weirdly grownup self-importance from the tulip fever of festival awards season as an upscale spin on an established pop culture brand. The year’s biggest disappointment has arrived.

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