‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Review: A Shocking Movie—Shockingly Bad, That Is

Joker, a Todd Phillips film very, very loosely based on a handful of pages from Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland, broke the mold for modern comics-to-film adaptations by radically reinterpreting popular characters and abandoning the superhero genre altogether. It was an exciting idea in theory, a test of the filmgoing audience’s willingness to take a chance on something new so long as it’s dressed up as something familiar. A very successful test, indeed, earning 11 Oscar nominations and $1 billion in worldwide box office. However, Joker wasn’t anything new—it was a transparent and vastly inferior riff on Taxi Driver that, like its inspiration, disproportionately appealed to white male edgelords who over-identify with its antihero. It may be the most overhyped film of the last five years, unworthy of a fraction of the acclaim or even the derision that it’s received.

Its new sequel, however, absolutely deserves the hate that’s coming to it. Joker: Folie à Deux is a product of wild, aimless ambition, the sort of mad swing that would be laudable if it weren’t so absolutely awful. It falls flat as a musical, as a courtroom drama, as a romance, and as a character piece. It’s the rare film that is both weird and boring, to a degree that it’s hard to imagine anyone enjoying it.

Joaquin Phoenix reprises his Oscar-winning role as Arthur Fleck, a disturbed aspiring comedian awaiting trial for the five murders he committed while wearing clown makeup in the previous film. Fleck, also known by his stage name Joker, has become a cult figure for the people of Gotham City, and his trial is a media circus aired on live TV. While many Gothamites would like to see District Attorney Harvey Dent (Harry Lawley) send Fleck to the electric chair, many of the disenfranchised masses see Joker as a powerful symbol of . . . something. He’s a vague countercultural figure representing societal collapse, or maybe our broken health care system, or possibly our absurd class structure. It doesn’t matter. As in real life, the Joker represents anarchy to people who have no idea what actual anarchists believe.

Joker’s biggest fan is Lee (Lady Gaga), a fellow mental patient with whom he falls madly in love. The intensity of their romance puts a song in their hearts, and they repeatedly break out of the film’s bleak, grimy reality into musical fantasy sequences patterned after ‘50s MGM classics or ‘70s variety shows. Or at least, they do some of the time. About half of the songs in Folie à Deux are fully-fledged musical numbers in which Phoenix and Gaga deliver appropriately stagey performances using their full chest voices. The other half are diegetic, shot like drab, boring dialogue scenes and sung in the weak, reedy style that actors use when they’re trying to pretend they’re not trained singers. The songs themselves are mostly old show tunes and standards that have been done to death, often underscored by the scratchy ominous cellos that won composer Hildur Guǒnadóttir an Oscar last time around. Each song stops the movie dead in its tracks. Not a single one is memorable.

It’s never clear to what extent we’re supposed to find Arthur and Lee’s romance disturbing, but whatever Phillips and company’s intent, it’s lifeless on screen. Both characters are damn near impossible to root for, but somehow the pairing doesn’t even warrant a snide “they deserve each other.” It’s simply impossible to care what happens to either of them, individually or as a unit. While Phoenix will likely garner acclaim for his off-putting performance and commitment to maintaining his character’s skeletal frame, it’s remarkable how little world-famous pop star Lady Gaga pops in this film. Lee—a drastically different interpretation of comics antiheroine Harley Quinn—feels as if she could be played by anyone, particularly since the film rarely lets Gaga sing like we know she can.

To the film’s credit, Folie á Deux paints a much more interesting and complex portrait of its protagonist than the previous chapter. The first movie portrays Arthur Fleck as an improbably unfortunate sad sack who the entire world treats as a punchline or punching bag in a narrative so bleak and manipulative that you have no choice but to pity him. Folie á Deux finds him incarcerated, but also more accepted and respected than he’s ever been in his life. The story takes Arthur on a bizarre ego trip where he must determine where, if anywhere, the line between himself and his Joker persona resides. Is he, in fact, the symbol his troubled fanbase has come to worship? It’s a premise that might have been interesting were it not executed in such a clumsy, meandering way.

Folie á Deux’s central musical motif is “That’s Entertainment,” introduced when Arthur, Lee, and a crowd of other inmates are watching 1953’s The Band Wagon. In this scene, a dramatic actor (Jack Buchanan) tells his song-and-dance counterpart (Fred Astaire) that he’s “sick of these arbitrary boundaries between musical and drama.” “High-brow” or “low-brow,” if something is entertaining, it’s entertainment. This sentiment has been vindicated by the subsequent 70 years of cross-pollination between theater, film, television, comics, and video games. It is, however, an insufficient defense for this film. They might as well have called it Joker: That’s Entertainment and This Isn’t.