With the cat well and truly out of the bag now, it’s difficult not to feel that this film’s release for the home market is a tad redundant. With the punchline already out there, does anyone really care what the joke was?

If you happen to be one of the few who are blissfully unaware of what the gag was, it was thus: what happens when an Oscar nominated actor pretends to quit acting in favour of starting a new career as a rapper? This is the ruse that was conjured up by Joaquin Phoenix and his brother-in-law Casey Affleck.

Affleck followed Phoenix around with his film crew, seemingly capturing the fallout from the news that Phoenix was giving up his day job, and his subsequent efforts to be taken seriously as a rap artist. The initial announcement caused ripples of confusion throughout the media. Then, with more clips of Phoenix behaving badly at live PA events, on top of his now infamous appearance on Letterman show, rumours of it all actually being a hoax were being bandied about well before its release.

Some might say my beard has grown way outta control, but I disagree.

These clips may well have lit up YouTube, but sadly these huge hits didn’t translate to box office numbers. By the time it came out in cinemas, audiences really didn’t care enough one way or another, regardless of whether it was true or not.

And yet there’s still something oddly intriguing about watching Phoenix in this mockumentary. It could be said that it may well be one of his greatest performances on screen to date. There’s no doubt he takes the part seriously; he grows the kind of facial hair that would make the most hardened of terrorists envious; he also puts on a serious amount of weight.

Then there’s the process of trying to figure out how many of the contributors (including Sean ‘P for Puff Diddy’ Combs and Ben Stiller) were actually in on the joke, as many of them have pretty good poker faces.

Even Affleck comes out of it well with credibility as he shows great affection for the documentary genre, giving it a believable glaze of realism from the off.

Ironically, for a film that eventually came out as being an examination of celebrity and its relationship with the press and public, it does feel self-indulgent in places. Phoenix is in virtually every scene, and by the end it starts to take its toll on both him and audiences alike. To say that the concept runs out of steam by the end is a vast understatement.

Despite dragging on a bit, it’s still a fascinating experiment, whether seen as a serious indictment of celebrity, or merely a time when Phoenix looked kinda fun with his gnarly beard – you decide.