About "A Joker's Card"

“A Joker’s Card,” while clearly an offbeat satire, daringly speculates what might’ve happened with the offspring of some of superheroes’ most elite in a film that flirts with the underworld of sex and leather – but actually has very little to do with that at all.

Ultimately, it is an amalgam of film genres; part black comedy, accented by elements of screwball spoofery, Johnny Wu’s film-short illuminates an otherwise dark existence for a handful of sons and daughters of action super-figures from Gotham to D.C.

A determined but focused Jonathan Napier – whose institutionalized father, The Joker, remains in an mentally disturbed abyss – schemes with the asylum’s entrusted orderly, Vince Fries (who happens to be the son of Mr. Freeze), to settle a life-long score with his adversarial peers – the ones who made him the scapegoat for his father’s misdeeds.

Jonathan’s central focus is on Nick Grayson – the lovable but in-your-face, flaming gay son of an absentee Dick Grayson (a.k.a. Nightwing, who happens to be Batman’s prized protege). In a clumsy but successful plot to kidnap Nick, Jonathan, in dramatic form, proclaims unto a very puzzled and somewhat uninterested Nick what has fueled his hatred. It is not until the dominatrix of the asylum, Donna Isley (super-hero Poison Ivy’s leather-donning, fetish-freak daughter) reveals that Napier’s ultimate goal to kill Nick is when the flamboyant queen’s flaming personality starts to dim – but only temporarily.

Although Nightwing’s status as the ultimate, modern hero is established, the real heroes are the least likely characters of “A Joker’s Card.”

Jonathan and Vince have a chance encounter with a seemingly innocuous, heavy-set Ellen – who not at all resembles her shapely Wonder Woman maternal figure. Ellen wasn’t looking for any trouble but follows up on her instincts to sneak up on the plotting duo’s trail, only to complete an allegiance amongst Nick, Donna and herself – while discovering abilities no one, including Ellen, herself – knew she had.

Complete with action-fight scenes that lampoon not only classic comic book elements but Hollywood’s larger-than-life depictions of them, “A Joker’s Card” manages to leave you wondering why all these super-kids -- who on the surface seem so dysfunctional -- are, in fact, stable and in touch with the human condition.