The People's Joker
First screened and reviewed in January 2025
Director: Vera Drew. Cast: Vera Drew, Kane Distler, Lynn Downey, Nathan Faustyn, James Liebe Hart, Griffin Kramer, Christian Calloway, Trevor Drinkwater, Maria Bamford, Scott Aukerman, Ruin Carroll, Dan Curry, Tim Heidecker, Ember Knight, Bob Odenkirk, Alec Robbins, Bambi Belle, Denali Winter. Screenplay: Vera Drew and Bri LeRose. In Brief:
Could easily have been a vanity project or snide parody. Instead exhibits amazing visual and thematic gumption.
VOR:⑤
However lo-tech, the crowd-sourced backgrounds and effects work are constant mind-blowers. Intricate. Brave. Enticing glimpse at possible futures.
I don't know what exactly I thought The People's Joker was, but I'm pretty sure I was expecting a more straight-ahead parody, totally governed by snide affect. Having seen no trailers, I also assumed it would be the kind of low-budget anarchist outsider art that asks a lot of indulgence for bare-bones production values while it shoves all its chips onto the squares of concept, affect, and commitment to the bit.
So color me amazed and grateful that The People's Joker is one of the astounding audio-visual experiences of the year, invigoratingly funny in a key all its own, while also making clear that it's an eccentric processing of real personal pain and frustration. The fact that this is such an intractably personal caustic/comic howl from director-star-cowriter Vera Drew but also a widely crowd-sourced enterprise at every level of production (visual concepts, mise-en-scène, effects work, animations) is a pretty amazing achievement in itself. So is the script's deceptively tight structure despite the movie's beyond-freewheeling surface. The People's Joker can often feel shapeless, for better and worse, but never actually is, as becomes increasingly evident. Plus, you try making a coming-out story as a trans woman and a comedian that's also a viciously specific yet multi-pronged media industry critique that's also a chronicle of important but deeply failed bonds with both a mother and a partner that's also a devoutly point-by-point satire of the Joker mythology that's simultaneously a wickedly inspired reprisal and repurposing of that parable. In 90 minutes.
I'm less sure about the earliest and especially the latest segments than the long, layered, rambunctious middle, and one can always pick nits, but I was really blown away by this! Cinematic Smylex, without the shitty side-effects. Grade:B+
