The People's Joker
Altered Innocence | Release Date: April 5, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
78
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 23 Critic Reviews
Positive:
21
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenMay 1, 2024
The People’s Joker feels less like the work of someone who wants to watch the Batman burn and more like a refashioning of a modern myth for personal purposes. It’s the ultimate kill-the-author gesture, one that ironically gives birth to another author. No, even better: a community of authors, working together to create something wholly new and true. Read full review
91
The PlaylistChristian GallichioMay 14, 2024
The People’s Joker is deeply weird and often feels like the first draft of someone’s first attempt at using genre as a type of autofiction. But it’s also heartfelt, fascinating, and a really compelling introduction to an original cinematic voice. Read full review
89
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiApr 5, 2024
It’s filtering Vera Drew’s autobiographical story through the lens of contemporary popular culture, transforming her own life into myth while transforming corporatized IP into punk rock anarchy. Read full review
88
Washington PostJen YamatoApr 19, 2024
Both a tough-love letter to the commodified IP it satirizes and a scathing takedown of mainstream comedy institutions, this defiantly personal low-budget marvel is also a genuinely affecting queer coming-of-age tale that packs a more poignant punch than most entries in the superpowered canon. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comClint WorthingtonApr 5, 2024
It’s a film about outsiders, made by outsiders, that feels like outsider art, which is maybe the most exciting thing about it. Read full review
85
SlashfilmBJ ColangeloApr 2, 2024
Vera Drew is both the unstoppable force and the immovable object, and we should all be so lucky to bear witness to her madness. The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules, and The People's Joker refuses to follow any of them. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubLeigh MonsonApr 3, 2024
On one level, it directly lampoons the artificial mechanisms by which big-budget blockbusters tell their stories, yet it also provides an avenue for deeply personal storytelling within the framework of our shared cultural mythology. Read full review
83
The Film StageAlistair RyderApr 2, 2024
The freewheeling nature with which she veers between heightened, comic-adjacent antics and looser improv-stylings that are grounded exclusively within the audience’s frame of reference shouldn’t work, yet it’s the source of much of the film’s charm. Drew doesn’t aim to disguise the low-budget nature of the production, and rather than hope viewers suspend disbelief, she asks you to indulge in how she plays around with the genre’s artificiality. Read full review
83
IndieWireJude DrySep 21, 2022
Coming out as a bold filmmaker with a fearless voice, prolific alt comedy editor Vera Drew’s mixed media dystopia is an experimental trans coming of age story wrapped in a scathing critique and confident rebuke of mainstream comedy. Fiercely original and deeply personal, it’s too damn good not to be seen. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesTara BradyFeb 26, 2025
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. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesManuel BetancourtApr 26, 2024
Equally brazen and ambitious, Drew’s film is committed to embracing the zany undertones that have always bubbled under the surface of a comic book tale in which secret identities, arch performances and fabulous outfits (all worn in the dead of night, no less) have always felt like lifelines for queer and trans kids worldwide. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterJourdain SearlesApr 17, 2024
Combining comedy, action, drama and an impressive number of different animation styles, The People’s Joker is a self-conscious, intentional cult film, crafted with genuine love for everything in the margins. Read full review
80
Screen RantSarah LittleApr 12, 2024
It's hilarious, heartbreaking, distinctive, significant, and just what Hollywood needs after countless DC and Marvel projects. Read full review
80
The New YorkerRichard BrodyApr 8, 2024
It’s a freestanding, freewheeling work that relies on familiar characters to tell a story closer in substance and tone to the sexual fury, social outrage, wild humor, and outlaw freedom of John Waters’s films, and it has a vociferously didactic streak that’s playful yet focussed. Read full review
80
ColliderRoss BonaimeApr 3, 2024
The People's Joker is a bold vision, a mixture of a coming-of-age story and parody, infused with a transition story that is emotionally powerful and absolutely necessary. Read full review
79
Paste MagazineJacob OllerApr 3, 2024
It’s a funky, janky, raw piece of autobiography, masquerading as the only thing the film industry makes anymore: A superhero movie. The riotous and weaponized result is everything the corporate use of the Joker isn’t, and everything it could be. Read full review
77
PolygonKatie RifeSep 14, 2022
In an age where corporate IP has become a de facto religion in global cinema culture, The People’s Joker is a blasphemous Molotov cocktail of a movie, with a unique and valuable point of view. And it’s hilarious, too. Read full review
75
ObserverDylan RothMay 8, 2024
I can sympathetically and intellectually appreciate just how rare it is to see a wacky comic-book movie about growing up trans and finding yourself and your people, about coping with a repressive parent who takes your gender dysphoria as a personal affront, of struggling to build a healthy relationship when so many of your peers are similarly traumatized by a society that is hostile to their very existence. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperApr 25, 2024
The People’s Joker pushes boundaries and questions the status quo, but it also works as a sincerely told origins story for Joker the Harlequin. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineBrad HanfordApr 2, 2024
Throughout The People’s Joker, Drew lampoons comedy institutions as freely as she does superhero hegemony, in effect mounting an impassioned argument for the vitality of art made at the margins regardless of classification. Read full review
70
The New York TimesErik PiepenburgApr 4, 2024
It’s aggressively self-indulgent, cinematically topsy-turvy and exhausting. It’s also singular, daring and an uncompromising cannonball into the queer cinema pool. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerApr 11, 2024
The People’s Joker feels like it would work better as a one-woman show, a monologue that seems weighed down by the burden of its own metaphor. Read full review
40
We Got This CoveredCharlotte SimmonsApr 18, 2024
Its abstract foundation is incredibly fertile creative ground, but 'The People's Joker's nuclear, self-indulgent execution is the downfall to its buzzworthy rise. Read full review
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