In 2019, Todd Phillips directed Joker, (very) loosely based on the DC Comics Batman villain. Joaquin Phoenix played Arthur Fleck, a mentally ill societal castoff who finds a new identity in the Joker. The film itself was okay; it looked great and Phoenix was excellent. But it was also massively overhyped. It owed a lot to Martin Scorsese, too much, perhaps. If you’ve seen Taxi Driver and King of Comedy, you’ve seen two much better movies.
I’m sure plenty of regular moviegoers liked the film, but it also attracted a more weaponized crowd that responded to Joker’s violence and middle finger to societal norms in ways that missed the point. Much like the people who didn’t get that Fight Club was a take down of toxic masculinity, not a celebration of it. We’ll come back to these people in a moment.
Joker: Folie à Deux takes place two years after the events of the first film. Fleck is in Arkham Asylum, awaiting his day in court for the murders he committed. There, he meets and falls in love with another inmate, Harley Quinn, played by Lady Gaga. (By the way, ‘folie à deux’ means, ‘shared madness’).
First, let’s get the positives out of the way. As with the first film, it looks great. It’s well shot and there is some amazing production design. Phoenix is once again strong as Fleck/Joker. Gaga is good too. I will also give Phillips credit for not just phoning in a sequel copy of the first movie, for trying something different. Unfortunately, while some may lambast it for straying too far from the blueprint, this isn’t the reason Joker 2 didn’t work for me.
The film, while not wholly unwatchable, is not good. Its biggest sin is that it’s excruciatingly boring. It’s dramatically inert. Nothing really happens for the first hour and a half. Arthur Fleck mopes around prison and meets a girl. He prepares for his trial, then they start said trial (nice to see Catherine Keener as his put-upon lawyer and Brendan Gleeson as a prison guard though).
The film is also a musical, which feels inexplicable. The songs aren’t terrible, though they are lyrically dead on arrival and performed very poorly for the most part. I assume the gritty delivery was on purpose, especially considering both stars can sing. There’s no reason for this to be a musical, but the least they could have done was poured some imagination into the songs. The Joker in a musical? You could have gotten to Rocky Horror Picture Show levels of wacky creativity with the music. And because the songs don’t do anything, they serve to drag the pacing of the movie down further. There’s a whole lotta unnecessary going on for a movie that’s two hours and 18 minutes long.
I mentioned Gaga earlier — she is somewhat inspired casting, whether it was a musical or not, taking over the now iconic Quinn role. However, Harley is shorted as a character; she’s a cypher. In fact, I’ll go one step further and say that this should have been Harley’s story. We could watch her origin play out like we did Joker’s in the first film, but all against the backdrop of Fleck’s trial and the people mythologizing him.
In a weird way, this movie made me appreciate the first one a little more (but not a lot). At least the OG Joker had something to say about things like society, mental illness, and political movements, even if it was a bit confused on its messaging. Folie à Deux doesn’t have much to say at all, and the themes it does have aren’t explored well.
Here’s where I go back to those more confused or toxic fans. In the first movie, Joker captured the imagination of young, disenfranchised people (mostly male incel types), who were willing to follow him into the breach. In a meta twist, the movie itself cultivated some of these people in real life, people who didn’t get that the Joker wasn’t really the hero of that movie.
So, let me ask you — who was Folie à Deux for? Who, of these incels (that haven’t seen a Scorsese movie), want a love struck musical where their hero is slowly deconstructed? Was this all a statement of some kind from Phillips? Was this intended to address the people that misunderstood the first film? A $200 million middle finger to the audience that drove Joker is a pretty high price to pay to make a point.
Though I’m sure some of them, like the Joker’s followers in the movies themselves, will double down and follow the empty emperor’s new clothes of it all.
Folie à deux, indeed.
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