Joker: Folie a Deux is One Sour Note After Another
Director Todd Phillips can't get the tune right in this long-awaited sequel
It’s been five years since director Todd Phillips introduced audiences to his take on the Clown Prince of Crime, the Joker. The dark, highly divisive feature heavily inspired by Martin Scorsese’s 1982 feature The King of Comedy worked strongly for certain audiences and repulsed others. It’s doubtful there will be much debate about its sequel, the musical-tinged Joker: Folie a Deux. With a near 2.5 hour runtime, the film struggles to hit the right note, vacillating between a half-baked toxic romantic drama and a jukebox musical focused on personal identity and fame.
Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is on trial for murdering five people during the course of the first movie. Imprisoned in Arkham Asylum, Arthur is probably worse off than he was last time, perceived as butt of the joke with Arkham’s abusive guards. When he meets the equally disturbed Lee (Lady Gaga), Arthur believes he’s found true love in spite of his beleaguered attorney (Catherine Keener) telling him there’s more to Lee than he knows.
Like any good Warner Bros. property, Joker: Folie a Deux starts with the return of the Looney Tunes opening and an animated Joker-centric cartoon (what, did you expect something else) showing the dichotomy of Joker vs. Arthur. It sells itself as an audacious, unconventional beginning to a villain movie — although Birds of Prey did something similar, but okay — but really just shows the thin theme that will run for the next two-plus hours: the war between Arthur Fleck and his alter-ego that maybe doesn’t really exist?
Phillips and cowriter Scott Silver tug at threads of an interesting story, particularly a dark social satire that is heavily coded towards examining the fervent fan response to the first film. Who is Arthur Fleck without the Joker opens up the movie to a dark look into the psyche of those who glorify and celebrate mass murderers or anyone causing chaos under the name of freedom. The problem is the film never seems to have an answer to those questions and instead seems almost gleeful in how mean it can get at every character involved. Make no mistake, no one gets or seeks redemption, but Phillips and crew also undercut solid performances with a mean-spirited edge that gets tiresome, particularly in a beautifully acted scene between Phoenix and Leigh Gill that has haphazard attempts at humor stuffed into it.
Who is Joker? And, by extension, who is Arthur Fleck? In 2019, Arthur Fleck could be read as a downtrodden young man angry at the lack of respect he’s gotten in an uncaring world. In 2024, he seems like a guy who just wants to be loved, who (maybe) is apologetic about his actions, might be crazy but definitely has been victimized. Do these things feel contradictory? Yes. The problem is these don’t feel like attempts at making Arthur more human but retconning a character that, as the first film laid out, didn’t give a fuck what humanity thought. Now, he comes off like a thin-skinned wimp who’s only popularity is trolling people.
Arthur Fleck still has his fans on the streets of Gotham, the charming yet psychotic Lee being the most devoted in a way women who marry serial killers usually are. This new go-round has seen comparisons to another Martin Scorsese feature, 1977’s New York, New York with its jukebox musical presentation, showy 1940s-esque dance numbers and a relationship involving two crazy kids who love making each other suffer. Phoenix is bold and flamboyant one moment, mild and withdrawn the next but it never feels organic or natural to anything. It just comes off as loud for the sake of it.
The arrival of Lady Gaga’s Lee provides a needed bit of light into what feels like 40 minutes of grimdark wandering. There’s a liveliness to how Gaga plays Lee that is both relatable and intoxicating. The way she cooly uses a book of matches to light a piano on fire and then casually sit down, or how she can dress like a sweet young woman and just smolder in the front row of a courtroom. You understand not just why Arthur would be drawn to her, but anyone, really. Which makes it such a shame that her character feels so flat and underutilized. We learn a few passing things about her life that hint at a far more interesting story of a young woman seeking attention through proximity to a dangerous man.
Really, the only thing we’re told that unites Arthur and Lee is the equivalent of “her crazy matches his crazy.” But there’s little hedonism found in their relationship. The more overt comparison found in Joker: Folie a Deux is Oliver Stone’s 1994 film Natural Born Killers, if Mickey and Mallory Knox spent a lot of time talking about killing and screwing while doing little of either. And Gaga is mostly relegated to singing and generally being Arthur’s quiet cheering section in the courtroom and perpetual encouragement in his fantasy sequences. To both their credit, Phoenix and Gaga have chemistry and it would have been fun to see them play more in a livelier film.
While Phillips and crew have said the movie isn’t a musical, it is. The problem is it’s less Phantom of the Opera and more Les Miserables (the Russell Crowe version). Phoenix spends most of his musical moments singing in a strangled half-whisper, with only a few instances where he’s actually allowed to belt out a strong note. Gaga, whom we know is a fierce performer, feels hampered by Phoenix’s lack of musical power. She never gets to hit the highs of her musical work in A Star is Born which leaves both coming off like this is a sad, drunken night of karaoke.
And while these musical numbers have the thinnest of connective tissue — they’re in love! they’re singing how they feel! — it only illustrates how barebones the actual plot of the movie is. The courtroom theatrics of Joker’s trial come and go, and while Joker still has the ability to inspire chaos by purely existing it’s all channeled through Lee telling Arthur how much support he has. It’s implied, by Keener’s attorney, that this is all false but we don’t get as many of the grand shots of the sea of supporters or other instances of people connecting with Joker like the first film. This does lead to a gut punch of a sad, depressing ending but because there’s no narrative exploration of that it’s hard not to see the end as just a cruel way for Phillips to peace out of filming these movies altogether.
(Avoiding spoilers, but there’s a final scene that looks to conceivably tie this narrative into A Batman universe and my audience was not having it.)
Joker: Folie a Deux is an ugly look at fan service, obsession, and toxicity without any exploration of the “why” behind them all. It’s a surface level dive anchored by two performers who should have been far more meat to chew on. The musical nature of the movie plays at fantasy but comes off more like a gimmick. If Phillips is done with these movies it couldn’t come soon enough.
Loved this film. Cult classic for sure.
The first movie was an irritatingly pretentious mess so I'm not surprised that the follow-up fares even worse.