There hasn’t been a more fascinating “tied up in right’s issues” guerrilla indie since 2013’s Escape from Tomorrow, the paranoid thriller secretly filmed and set entirely in Walt Disney World. Operating under the loosest definition of parody, The People’s Joker (D+), directed by, co-written by and starring Vera Drew, premiered at 2022’s Toronto Film Festival and has been embroiled in legal challenges ever since because it leverages nearly all elements of DC’s Batman universe to craft a loosely threaded tale about transgender identity. The backstory is much more fascinating than what’s actually on-screen as Drake utilizes live action drama with occasional stop-motion and other forms of animation swirling around Drew’s transgender woman mash-up of iconic villain The Joker and sidekick/love interest Harley Quinn embodied in one protagonist. Drake’s central character is an aspiring comedienne working at a renegade theatre with Nathan Faustyn as slacker friend The Penguin to ostensibly ascend the late-night TV comedy industry. This antihero’s complex psychology isn’t served by a flimsy plot that feels like it’s being made up as it’s progressing, with the fact that it is unfunny being chalked up to the fact that the characters are making an “anti-comedy.” Kane Distler fares better than others in the ensemble as Mr. J, an emotionally manipulative trans man reminiscent of Jason Todd (a post-Dick Grayson Robin) and Jared Leto’s Joker from Suicide Squad; it’s a more fleshed out character with some showy moments, but the filmmakers drop the ball here too. Although the film’s aesthetic occasionally hits promising strides including a first date in a tunnel of love, it’s mostly a long string of misses packed into those 92 minutes. Kudos to the themes of self-acceptance embedded in the go-for-broke fantasia in which The Riddler, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, a CGI Nicole Kidman and a villainous Batman exist amidst an array of adjacent IP characters including Perry White, Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Betty Boop (perhaps Steamboat Willie was months from being available). An anti-depressant called Smylex administered at Arkham Asylum and acid-like vats of estrogen are among too many half-baked ideas in the madcap mishegoss. The filmmaking isn’t fascinating enough to justify the fuss. An actual parody could have been made from all these ideas; instead it’s more theft than deft.
