TIFF 2022: The People’s Joker Review

In her introduction to the film’s Midnight Madness premiere screening, director/writer/star Vera Drew explicitly set the scene for what we were about to experience with The People’s Joker: “people do not want you to see this movie.”

She is, of course, referring to DC Comics and Warner Bros., the owners of the IP she is flagrantly reskinning and in glorious fashion, and she might well have been right. Mere hours after the film’s first (and maybe only) showing, Drew withdrew the film from the festival due to “rights issues,” some speculating she received a cease and desist from the higher-ups themselves. 

But let’s be real: the reason they don’t want you to see this movie isn’t because it abuses arbitrary copyright law (because it doesn’t). It’s because it dares to remix one of the world’s most beloved mythologies through the lens of gender deconstruction and transgressive parody.

In a singular achievement that acts as a better homage to the Caped Crusader than most actual Batman films, Drew (along with a crew of over 100 visual effects artists, animators, and designers) has crafted a daring feature debut – a takedown on the state of modern comedy and gender politics that is so in touch with our current zeitgeist that it makes perfect sense that Drew was putting finishing touches on the film just one week prior to its screening (several publications received an advanced, unfinished work copy for reviews).

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Drew stars as a fictionalized version of herself, at least in the film’s opening moments. Narrating her own Joker origin story, Drew recounts her cisgendered childhood and feeling like she was born in the wrong body. Her mother, refusing to accept this, sends her to Arkham Asylum. The horrific Doctor Jonathan Crane performs an experimental surgery, one of the many manically surreal visual effects sequences, leaving her a mindless drone inhaling the brain-fogging drug Smylex. 

From the first fifteen minutes alone, Drew showcases an uncanny ability to effectively remap Batman characters and concepts onto her trans experience. It’s thrilling to watch something so wildly revisionist without a moment of hesitation, the equivalent of a mento lodged into the Diet Coke of the DCEU post-SnyderVerse. It also helps that Drew and co-writer Bri LeRose’s writing has a cutthroat comedic voice, laced with bullseye after bullseye of biting jabs at everything and everyone, from Lorne Michaels to Alex Jones.

Drew finally musters the money to move out from Smallville and pursue comedy in Gotham City, where the only legal avenue for it as the SNL-equivalent UCB, a show everyone agrees was funnier back in the 70s. After botching her audition, Drew teams up with fellow reject Oswald Cobblepot Jr. to form an underground “anti” comedy scene, which attracts a variety of other DC characters, such as Poison Ivy and Catwoman. It also attracts the attention of Bruce Wayne, who has since given up the cape and cowl to become a fascist political figure throughout Gotham.

Drew soon transforms into Joker The Harlequin, taking on a new gender identity and persona. She eventually meets Jason Todd, a fellow Joker comedian (and pseudo-parody of Leto’s take on the Clown Prince from Suicide Squad) who is also trans. Drew falls for him, and the two begin a relationship in a send-up of the iconic Harley/Joker dynamic. This central relationship provides a lot of the film’s heart, confronting serious themes of sexual abuse and gender identity amidst the craziness.

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In a visual feast that possibly features more blue-screening than an actually authorized DC Comics film, Drew comes into her own as an artist in one of most provocative and original films you’ll ever see. Featuring a thrilling onslaught of animation, visual effects, and fun design work in both makeup and costuming, a film that could easily be perceived as thoughtful cosplay is actually a multimedia manifesto that looks to connect an underrepresented experience to universal symbols of hope and justice. Vera Drew’s imaginative vision as a filmmaker and visual artist holds no bounds, and any DC fan worth their salt would be foolish to not give it the credence it rightfully has earned.



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