Joker: Folie à Deux, 2024.
Directed by Todd Phillips.
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Zazie Beetz, Steve Coogan, Harry Lawtey, Leigh Gill, Ken Leung, Jacob Lofland, Sharon Washington, Troy Fromin, and Bill Smitrovich.
SYNOPSIS:
While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur Fleck not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that’s always been inside him.
Co-writer/director Todd Phillips wants the last laugh with Joker: Folie à Deux. In some ways, it’s remarkable that something so anti-fan and experimental yet mainstream exists in a David Zaslav-run Warner Bros. world. None of this is the reason the movie is bad, mind you; that would be because, despite its initially intriguing, offputting nature that has no interest in being what anyone would expect from a Joker sequel, it is also crushingly boring and often feels like a 2+ coda to that film. The movie has a point to make, which could have simply been Todd Phillips making a statement online. Then again, perhaps it’s funnier to make people, especially fans, endure something so aggressively subversive and oppositional to what those fans believe. Either way, the film isn’t good.
Joker: Folie à Deux (penned by Todd Phillips and Scott Silver) is a courtroom drama that follows Arthur Fleck (a returning Joaquin Phoenix, once again unnerving and convincingly unstable) at Arkham Asylum whenever not on trial for his psychotic break and subsequent murders throughout the first film. Unsurprisingly, the guards (led by Brendan Gleeson) dish out inhumane treatment from time to time and reduce him to a source of cruel entertainment or personal gain. If they aren’t demanding to hear jokes, one of them is asking for an autograph under the impression it will be worth a hefty sum of money once he gets the death penalty.
Occasionally moved around the asylum, Arthur comes across a music room. He meets fellow inmate Lee (Lady Gaga), a disturbed individual who has developed an odd obsession with him and his actions. They quickly start falling for one another and planning a future that involves getting Arthur off trial, escaping, and building a mountain on the hills. At one point, Lee starts a fire because everyone working in this facility is incompetent (really, the movie makes everyone in New York City look incredibly irresponsible at their jobs), which leads to the two almost escaping while singing and dancing outside. It’s a sequence that plays like part of it might be inside Arthur’s head, but it is soon confirmed as full-on reality. So, too, is the scene where a guard lets Lee into Arthur’s bedroom at night.
Not only is there something wildly off and illogical about what’s happening here, but Arthur starts getting in touch with his musical side to express certain emotions. Most of these scenes depict Arthur retreating into his mind to sing and behave freely, especially when the courtroom pressure gets to be too much for him, but it mostly feels like a cheap tactic to get some Joker scenes in there alongside a scene or two of fantasy violence to be shoehorned into the marketing to muster up extremely misleading interest. Again, that’s not bad, but this movie is between interesting and boring across its entire running time.
Even with popstar sensation Lady Gaga in some of those musical sequences, the direction here is flat and makes no visually compelling use of real-life or fantasy surroundings. It’s one thing to make a Joker movie pointing and laughing at everyone who believes the character is some misunderstood symbol of good in the face of a selfish, greedy world looking down on the lower class, essentially making fun of Joker fans. That’s also one hell of a questionably cruel creative choice to make about a character who has been physically and sexually abused as a child, regardless of the murders he committed and cult following he amassed. It’s another thing to decide to make a musical that is a forgettable musical, aside from occasionally recognizing the lyrics from familiar songs. Fortunately, Hildur Guðnadóttir has crafted another brooding, unsettling score, trying and failing to do some heavy lifting from the rest of the lackluster narrative.
Speaking of Lee, this universe’s take on Harley Quinn, there isn’t much of a character here. She is infatuated with Arthur, but there’s never any sense of why since the screenplay spends most of its running time clouding whether or not this is a fresh interpretation of the character or something with slight familiarity with the source material. Is part of the joke here also casting Lady Gaga only to give her nothing memorable to do?
It truly is a baffling experience watching Joker: Folie à Deux, a movie certainly not made for fans but also seems to have been made for no one. By the time it tries to recreate some of the chaotic feel of the climactic first film, eventually taking a few admirable crazy swings, one can’t help shrugging one’s shoulders. It’s a film that wants to explore the extent of whether Joker is a second personality or an extension of Arthur, starting with a Looney Tunes-inspired cartoon to set up that concept but mostly slogs along aimlessly. It doesn’t know what to do with these ideas, characters, or subgenres. Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga are let down and left hanging in this mess.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
