Unless you’re Black Panther, no movie is exempt from bad reviews.

There’s also generally a timeline of sorts when it comes to these things, and Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker is a good illustration of that.

First, the reviews are (mostly) glowing, and then everyone tries to unpack what it must have been like portraying such a character.

Slowly but surely, as the hype grows, people grow weary, and reviews that are less stellar begin to pour in, which is what we’re looking at here.

We will begin with Mashable, which has a fairly balanced take with a few barbs:

To the extent that Joker feels unique, it’s thanks to Joaquin Phoenix — and in particular, his way of moving as Arthur, which is at once graceful and grotesque. Arthur never feels more wounded, more powerful, more menacing, or more fully realized than when he is dancing by himself, which is a blessing since there are many, many scenes of Arthur dancing by himself.

Otherwise, Joker tends toward the tedium that comes with taking big, familiar concepts and smothering them under layers upon layers of unearned self-seriousness…by the time the fully formed Joker started whining to a captive audience that “everybody is awful, and nobody’s civil anymore,” the only thing I could think was: Is that it?

Next up is the New York Times, no less:

To be worth arguing about, a movie must first of all be interesting: it must have, if not a coherent point of view, at least a worked-out, thought-provoking set of themes, some kind of imaginative contact with the world as we know it. “Joker,” an empty, foggy exercise in second-hand style and second-rate philosophizing, has none of that. Besotted with the notion of its own audacity — as if willful unpleasantness were a form of artistic courage — the film turns out to be afraid of its own shadow, or at least of the faintest shadow of any actual relevance…

It’s hard to say if the muddle “Joker” makes of itself arises from confusion or cowardice, but the result is less a depiction of nihilism than a story about nothing.

Let’s head over to the Guardian, who call it “the most disappointing film of the year” in a two-star review, to see what body blows can be landed:

The year’s biggest disappointment has arrived. 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 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. Joker’s own criminal and serial-killer career bafflingly fizzles…

This Joker has just one act in him: the first act. The film somehow manages to be desperately serious and very shallow.

Yeah, you get the drift.

Given the hype, good and bad, we’re all going to watch it, anyway.

Decent movies are so few and far between these days that the bar isn’t exactly high, either.

[sources:mashable&nytimes&guardian]