FUNNY HOW? IN ‘JOKER’ A VILLAIN TURNS ’70S ANTI-HERO
An air of menace and a cloud of controversy accompany the arrival of Todd Phillips’“Joker” like a thick perfume. That, in itself, could be something to celebrate. Danger isn’t a quality often found in the sanitized corporate-made movies of today, least of all in the safe, fan-friendly world of comic-book films.
“Joker,” though, is a calculatedly combustible concoction, designed, like its chaos-creating character, to cause a stir. To provoke and distort. I wish it was as radical as it thinks it is.
Instead, “Joker” is a mesmerizing, misjudged attempt to marry the madness
