When any film makes a billion dollars, there’s a sequel on the horizon, regardless of how unique or singular that first film is. And Todd Phillip’s (“The Hangover,” “War Dogs”) twisted take on DC’s clown prince of crime is as dark and un-sequel-friendly as they come. But it made a billion dollars and won a few Oscars, so here comes “Joker: Folie à Deux”, sequel that’s bigger, bolder, more musical, and more morally ambiguous than ever before.
The film picks up two years after the events of the first film as Arthur Fleck, played by Joaquin Pheonix (“Walk the Line,” “Beau is Afraid”), awaits trial for the murders he committed that inspired the riots across Gotham. While in Arkham Asylum, he meets Harleen Quinzel, played by Lady Gaga (“A Star is Born (2018),” “House of Gucci”), a fellow inmate who becomes obsessed with Arthur and his Joker persona. She inspires him to embrace his madness further, throwing his case into disarray for his lawyer Maryanne Stewart, played by Catherine Keener (“Being John Malkovich,” “Capote”), and guard at Arkham Jackie Sullivan, played by Brendan Gleeson (“Paddington 2,” “The Banshees of Inisherin”).
The only somewhat pretentious sounding title “Folie à Deux” means “madness for two.” Phillips and his co-writer Scott Silver (“8 Mile,” “The Fighter”) certainly create a lot of madness, but it all feels wildly pointless by the end of the film. The first half of the film feels bizarrely aimless, just futzing around until the second half set in the courtroom starts. But even then, it results in a lot of surface level discussions about Arthur and his potential mental illness that Phillips and Silver literally end before any definitive statements can even be made. It’s a film that loves to drag a lot of rough subject material up from the depths without actually committing to making any kind of statements on said material.
Pheonix is doing absolutely the best he can with much flimsier material, puttering around from scene to scene, making funny faces and talking with the slight high-pitched wilt that he crafted for the first film. It's a less compelling performance, but it never feels like it's his fault. Gaga is incredibly underutilized meanwhile. Her performance is fine enough, but the film simply does not know what to do with her after the first act, feeling content to have her pop up a few more times before disappearing completely. Keener is there and then gone, barely making an impact when she is being used, and Gleeson’s performance, while excellent, is buried in the film’s overtly cruel characterization of his role.
While on paper, the film is building to the end of Arthur’s trial, the actual events and movement of the plot feels wildly unmotivated. Things just sort of happen and never feel as though they’re building to any sort of climax. The biggest thing that happens in the third act comes completely out of nowhere and serves as an excuse to avoid giving a direct statement on the film’s biggest central question. Even the scenes that follow feel so disconnected from that climax that it feels like they took place before the third act and just happened to get slotted into the end. It all feels pointless, like a film based around nihilism but not even in an interesting way.
Meanwhile, the musical aspect feels even more pointless. While plenty of the scenes are well shot, the rest feel slotted in for no reason. They’re set in average locations, in the middle of other preexisting moments on a whim. But beyond the quality of the numbers or shots, they don’t add anything to the film as a whole. Whether they’re “in Arthur’s mind” or not, removing them from the film would change nothing about the plot or the film as a whole. They add nothing to the story and feel like the film’s most egregious bit of “prestige film” detail slathered upon a project undeserving of that kind of attention.
At least the film’s returning cinematographer Lawrence Sher (“Garden State,” “The Hangover”) shoots the film with the same gorgeous level of detail as before, crafting the best-looking version of these misguided ideas. Hildur Guðnadóttir (“Tár,” “Women Talking”) also returns to score the sequel after winning an Oscar for doing the same for the first. Her music still manages to be an evocative high point, but it’s too often drowned out by the film’s bizarre song choices and musical numbers.
So many of the elements within the film that, as previously stated, work on paper but not in practice, come off as not a mistake somewhere along the filmmaking process, but rather a middle finger to the prospect of the blockbuster industry. Make a sequel to a billion-dollar grossing incel-bait dark comic book movie? Sure, but let’s make it a courtroom drama-slash-musical with half the violence as before and a quarter of the plot. Can the lead character sing? Let’s just wing it and if he can’t, we’ll act like it’s an additional detail underneath all the artsy details we’re playing with.
The problem here isn’t that the film is slower or that Arthur’s singing is bad or that it doesn’t decide to commit to an answer to its central moral question. Plenty of films play with those kinds of aspects. The problem here is that the audience is paying the price, because it doesn’t feel purposeful. It feels like an accident being covered for, and it makes your audience have a worse time as a result. To put it in simpler terms: Arthur can be a bad singer, but he can’t be too bad or you’ll make the audience actually bemoan when he sings, otherwise you’re cutting off your clown nose to spite your face.
“Joker: Folie à Deux” will certainly be remembered for quite a long time, but the reason for that remembrance is almost a complete inverse of the first film. Despite Pheonix and Gaga trying their best while trapsing through a gorgeous looking film, Phillips has far too many heady ideas that never actually result in anything meaningful or compelling. Worse, he stretches it out, resulting in a slog of a film that acts as if it knows better than its audience, without ever stopping to think what it knows better about. It’s a fascinating film in how it fails, and one that could easily be dissected and discussed, but certainly not rewatched, for a long time to come. 1.5/5
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