Movie Review: JOKER (2012)

Shirish Kunder’s first directorial, JAANEMANN was very enjoyable, incredibly innovative and unique. His 2^nd however, was a travesty of epic proportions that is similar to any car wreck that you cannot look away from despite the brightness of the raging explosion blinding you. This is JOKER.

Rating:

0 Out of 5 Stars

I can’t even give you a rundown of the premise without being enraged with wall punching emotions, but I’ll try. You owe me one. There’s a village in India that, literally, isn’t on the Map, due to some stupid reason. The village is inhabited by the descendants of Mental Asylum patients who revolted and took over the village decades ago. However, one villager worked hard and went to USA to become a Scientist and look for Aliens. (so still crazy to a point.) Through a chain of events, he’s back in his village with his girlfriend in tow, trying to con his way into getting the village known and better his home towns economic situation with tourists, government help, etc.

It’s stupid. The entire village comprising of Mental patients’ descendants make no sense. How did they form a community? Raise children? Sustain a village without total social and infrastructural collapse? Even stupider: the only educated person who apparently ‘got out’ and went as far as America, used the dumbest idea of faking Aliens sightings to put the village in the limelight of the Media and the world. He does this by faking a crop circle, then using fruits and Christmas lights to dress people up as Aliens for the global Media. You can tell he’s a scientist eh?

I realize it sounds like I’m shitting you… but I shit you not. This is the synopsis and story of Joker. I think the most asinine thing other than the movie itself, are the actors, producers, and others involved, who heard a variation of the above synopsis and reacted with “That sounds AWESOME!”

JOKER is the most horrible film of 2012. Hell, of forever. The story is crap. The performances are duller than the lazy effort at anything even resembling special effects. The entire concept is so far beyond ridiculous, that even the strongest suspension of disbelief doesn’t save this film.

Shirish Kunder was supposed to be an innovative filmmaker, more so after JAANEMANN. But JOKER is a lackluster attempt at, I don’t even know what genre. I was one of few people that enjoyed and reveled in the genius that was JAANEMANN. So I personally feel outraged at this crap. I can merely hope that this was a misstep in a future career of awesome, as I have not yet seen a film with the narrative creativity of JAANEMANN to this date.

Akshay Kumar wearing Aviator sunglasses, in a Fedora and Dhoti?! (loin cloth-like traditional bottom) Horrible! Sonakshi Sinha doing nothing but being cute and giggling, as has become her signature. Mediocre! Shreyas Talpade screaming gibberish the entire damn movie? WTF?!

JOKER is a poor attempt at story telling and an even poorer attempt at filmmaking in general. Everything from the plot to the performances and the over all execution of the film is so horribly bad, that there’s not enough synonyms of ‘bad’ to describe it.