The People’s Joker
Vera Drew’s film has been a must-see curiosity for a lot of film critics and fans ever since it was pulled from future screenings at the Toronto Film Festival in 2022 when Warner Bros. went after the film for its use of DC Comics characters, albeit in a satirical manner. Finally watching the film, “The People’s Joker” is very clearly the work of a filmmaker who finds something personal in these characters, and uses them to tell a story that matters to her. That it is more interesting in how it uses those characters than most recent DC movies have is on DC, however, not Drew.
Right away, Drew calls her shot in exactly the type of film that “The People’s Joker” is going to be. Dressed up in a riff of Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, waiting for their time in the spotlight, Joker the Harlequin (Drew) begins to narrate their story about how, at a young age in the town of Smallville, she never felt quite right as a boy, and watching a Caped Crusader film their mother took them to as a child (obviously intended to be “Batman Forever”) helped make them realize that. Joker’s Mother (Lynn Downey), however, is not ready to accept their child as feeling out of place as a boy. Eventually, Joker grows up, and travels to Gotham City, hoping to break into comedy. Though they start that path, however, Joker finds themselves in the middle of the city’s comedic rogue’s gallery, and she feels like she’s found her place. Along the way, she finds herself in a relationship with a fellow comic, Mr. J ( Kane Distler), and while things seem perfect, the relationship will lead to further growth as Joker’s view on life shifts dramatically.
While I understand the legal reasons to call “The People’s Joker” a parody, this isn’t a parody in the way a lot of audiences understand the term as is used. In how it treats the landscape of Batman characters, this is much more in the “Blazing Saddles”/”Young Frankenstein” vein of parody, using genre as a way to tell a personal story that connects with the artist, rather than a film that simply is going for gags. Everything has purpose in Drew’s world, and it’s a big reason why I ended up vibing with the film. I’m not saying it’s on the same level of greatness as those Mel Brooks’s classics I mentioned above, but I definitely feel like, over time, as more people see the film, it’ll be seen as a loving tribute to not just the characters it utilizes, but how it uses the coming-of-age template to speak to one’s own personal journey. More than the film’s use of Batman iconography, that is why “The People’s Joker” entertained me, and moved me, the way it did.
