Three years after Vera Drew’s punk bildungsroman premiered at Toronto International Film Festival, The People’s Joker has emerged as a “fair use film” following a legal challenge from Warner Bros and DC Films.
The DC Extended Universe should take notes. This legally challenged DIY parody is, hands down, the most innovative superhero film of the decade.
An “autobiographical transgender coming-of-age story”, it stars Drew – also multitasking as co-writer, director and editor – as a closeted kid who experiences an epiphany watching Nicole Kidman’s performance in Batman Forever. It’s a big moment in what she characterises as a “blurry, cracked mosaic” of gender revelations.
“Was I born in the wrong body?” the unnamed protagonist asks their mother – who immediately calls Dr Crane of Arkham Asylum. He prescribes Smylex, a green gas that twists the patient’s face into a painfully forced smile.
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Fifteen years later the budding trans performer leaves stifling Smallville for the dystopian underground anti-comedy circuit of Gotham City, where Batman reigns with a fascistic grip (and appears on dating shows).
More than 100 artists contributed to the homeschool green screen and rough-hewn post-Minecraft animation. The anarchic and imaginative world-building around Batman’s hood is impressive. Variations of the DC characters Ra’s al Ghul, Penguin, Poison Ivy and Mr Mxyzptlk become embroiled in Vera’s zany bid for approval, love or TV ratings.
Encouraged by the bad-boy, Jared Leto-style anti-comic Mr J (Kane Distler), the heroine dives into a vat of oestrogen. Despite their increasingly toxic romantic relationship, she finally blossoms as Joker the Harlequin.
Drew, an Emmy-nominated editor who has worked with Sacha Baron Cohen and Eric André, seamlessly marries gender dysphoria, zingers and a computer-generated version of Lorne Michaels, creator of Saturday Night Live. An interlude featuring Mimi Zima’s Back of the Truck leaves the pricey musical numbers of Joker: Folie à Deux in the shade.
The People’s Joker is at the IFI and Light House cinema, in Dublin, from Wednesday, February 26th; and at Triskel, in Cork, from Monday, March 3rd
