Subscribe

New reviews, interviews, and features via RSS or Email.

Related Reviews

• The Dark Knight (2008)
• Batman Begins (2005)
• Batman: Gotham Knight (2008)
• Batman (1989)
• Batman Returns (1992)
• Batman Forever (1995)
• Batman & Robin (1997)
• Batman (1966)
• Batman (1943)
• Batman and Robin (1949)
• Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
• The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
• The Batman (2022)

Tim Heidecker

• Us (2019)
• Spin Me Round (2022)

Bob Odenkirk

• Breaking Bad: The Fifth Season (2012)
• The Spectacular Now (2013)
• Nebraska (2013)
• The Post (2017)
• Incredibles 2 (2018)
• Long Shot (2019)
• Little Women (2019)

Robert Wuhl

• Bull Durham (1988)

The People's Joker

(2024)

92 min. Altered Innocence. Director: Vera Drew. Cast: Vera Drew, Lynn Downey, Kane Distler, Nathan Faustyn, David Liebe Hart, Phil Braun, Maria Bamford, Tim Heidecker, Scott Aukerman, Bob Odenkirk, Robert Wuhl.

She ostensibly plays a cinematic supervillain in The People’s Joker, but as the story of the film—and, finally, the film itself—reaches ever-wider audiences, Vera Drew has come into focus as a cinematic superhero, willing a previously unthinkable project into existence. And that’s to say nothing of the enormous empowerment the film and its co-writer-director-star-editor-visual effects artist represent to the transgender community. In short, the powerhouse parody that dares to play in the corporate-controlled sandbox of the Batman intellectual property is a psychedelic, homemade punk-rock anti-comedy that’s going to rock your world whether you like it or not.

Of course, as in the film The People's Joker parodies (Todd Phillips' Joker), Gotham City's Clown Prince/ss of Crime is allowed more depth than mere villainy, rather more sinned against than sinner. In fact, Drew's Joker isn't a villain at all: she's a survivor of constant challenges topped by parental haplessness and a lifelong societal hostility toward her very being. As scripted by Drew and Bri LeRose (Lady Dynamite, Arrested Development), the film begins with its protagonist's coming of age story as a child (Griffin Kramer) surviving emotional hardship and weaving her serpentine way toward understanding of her queer identity as the adults around her pass the buck to a drug (amusingly, Smylex from the 1989 Batman) to repress her true self, quash her questioning, and paper over her depression with the doomed-to-fail antidepressant.

Once out on her own in rebel-rebel young adulthood as female-presenting Joker the Harlequin, the film's hero (now played by Drew) finds her vocation in comedy and a support group in the world of anti-comedy most popularly linked to the campy, deliberate awkwardness of comedian-actors Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, and Gregg Turkington. Drew cut her teeth with all of the above editing and directing projects like On Cinema at the Cinema and Beef House, as well as working with Sacha Baron Cohen on Who Is America? (scoring her an Emmy nod for editing) and Scott Aukerman on Comedy Bang! Bang! With the film functioning as a thrilling autofictional allegory, Drew's funhouse-mirror avatar dreams of SNL but winds up taking an alternative route through UCB, where she finds friendship with fellow aspiring comedian The Penguin (Nathan Faustyn) and cracked mentorship from Ra's al Ghul (Tim & Eric discovery David Liebe Hart).

The film's satire of the comedy world deepens when trans woman Joker the Harlequin meets her match in trans man Mr. J (Kane Distler), an amalgam of two (or more) key characters from the Batman mythos who's styled as Jared Leto's Suicide Squad Joker. Taking a wild ride of potent romance, sexual heat, and toxic narcicissm with Mr. J unlocks a whole new level of emotional complication for Joker the Harlequin and the film itself. By "The End" (with a cheeky promise of more), The People's Joker has traced trans coming of age and the liberation of transitioning; examined abuse and trauma in relationships; and served up comedy as densely packed with Batman lore and sight gags as this film's nearest cinematic relative, The Lego Batman Movie (seriously, you'll only catch it all with multiple viewings or, eventually, the remote-control capacity for freeze frame).

These 92 minutes keep on giving like a DC 100 Page Super Spectacular on crack (look it up, kids). While we should all remember this is a fair-use par-o-dy, people (stay right where you are, Warner Bros. Discovery, and no one will get hurt), it's a hop, skip, and a jump away from an Elseworlds tale that can stand beside the colorful, only semi-canonical pages of Arkham Asylum, The Dark Knight Rises, and other wild tales from the 85 years since Batman debuted. That Drew accomplishes it all while singing her deeply personal Song of Herself, sounding her barbaric yawp over the roofs of Gotham City, is no mean feat.

How the film made it from conception to audiences is a spectacular tale in itself, worth seeking out. Drew crowdfunded and crowdsourced the film into being with a giant group of collaborators excited to see a cinematic trans coming-out party parade its way through a Gotham made of green screen photography, multiple forms of animation, and pocketfuls of dreams. Is The People's Joker rough around the edges? You'd better believe it. But the medium is a large part of the message: Drew transforms a matter of budgetary necessity into a “fuck you if you don’t like it” self-expression, and if that’s not a metaphor for trans pride, I don’t know what is.

Sponsored Links