A really shallow, surface-level drama for the people, who've never read a comic book. This movie is very much like Logan in the sense, that many would probably applaud it for a "new bold take" on the familiar characters, but in the comics it's been done before. And just like in Logan the creators of this movie thought you do drama by making the protagonist's life bleak and pushing him into horrible situations. But no, it's not how you do it. I know that Todd Philips (unlike James Mangold) hadn't made dramas before, but he should've studied the craft before attempting this. But at least Logan had SOME interesting dramatic characters. This movie has none. Speaking of characters, I guess we've come to the point, where the name "Joker" doesn't mean anything anymore. Just dress him up as a clown and make him act crazy - there you go, Joker. I mean, what does he have to do with the source material? The person, who wrote this, obviously had no knowledge upon the subject and didn't do the research. And btw the writing in this film... I don't remember a single line of dialogue, that would impress me. The best one came at the end. If you've seen the film, you probably know which one I'm talking about - it's the one, when they showed that shot with dead bodies in the alley. It worked within the scene and metaphorically spoke about a different related event. That was probably the only moment in the film, where the writer (and I'm pretty sure Philips didn't write this line) showed any subtlety. And yet, the classic comic book, Batman: The Killing Joke was chock-full of this stuff, and then some. In conclusion, I'll mention 2 things I liked about this film:

1. The performances. Especially De Niro's one.
2. The original soundtrack.