Joker: Folie a Deux

2024's JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX was one of its year's biggest disappointments, winning favor neither with fans or critics.  Unlike its 2019 predecessor, it was a box office bust.  The unfavorable word of mouth spread quickly.  Maybe it was destined to fail.  The trailers revealed this long awaited sequel was in fact, a musical.  The disbelief was thick among the fanboys.  For me too, who is not among that lot.  I did not find the original film to be the masterwork it was hailed to be.  Then and now I feel it was a tepid homage at best.  To earlier films like TAXI DRIVER, films that examined mental illness and an obsession with hero adulation (the "hero" adulating himself).  JOKER spoke to a generation that likely had few cinematic reference points.  The sort of viewer unfamiliar with any film made before they were born. That's, sad to say, many, many individuals.  Thus, a mediocrity that fancied itself an edgy side chapter of a superhero franchise became a runaway smash, a phenomenon. 

 

It feels like a long epilogue to the first film, never propelling any story forward.  Stalled.  Verbally rehashing the events of the first film.  Over and over.  I kept waiting for this movie to progress.  Instead, it spends most of the time detailing Arthur Fleck's (Joaquin Phoenix) trial for the murder of five people.  He brags that it was actually six, including his mother.  It's been two years since Arthur killed those dudes on the subway and TV talk show host Murray Franklin (on live T.V.).  He's imprisoned at a state hospital that comes off as a surrealist's blah nightmare.  This is complemented by Lawrence Sher's blah cinematography.  

Arthur will meet Harleen Quinzel (Lady Gaga) in a music therapy class.  They seem to be two sides of the same bad penny.  She says she was committed for arson, then proceeds to torch a room while the residents are watching a movie.  "Lee" and Arthur's escape is foiled.  She is later released.  Arthur's attorney Maryanne (Catherine Keener) meanwhile is working on a dissociative disorder defense.  It was the "Joker" persona that made him do those awful things.  Lee will attend his trial and become his advocate to the press.  But, she is not who she seems.

Those musical numbers. Duets with our unsavory misfit lovers.  Some are semi-lavishly produced fantasies, others occur spontaneously out of straight conversations in dank locations.  Most are tunes you've probably heard.  Gaga wrote one original.  No one can fault her talent or presence.  Joaquin's voice at times reminded me of Randy Newman.  His laugh still sounds a bit like a demented 1970s Burt Reynolds.  In another movie, the numbers might have felt organic.  It could've worked.  Here, they feel like an intrusion, a distraction.  Little energy.  Dour.  Even PENNIES FROM HEAVEN's dark numbers provided more insight into its setting and plot.  This JOKER sequel is what is known as a "jukebox musical". The songs here do not elucidate the film's most interesting kernel - Arthur's illness.

Yes, it's discussed in those lengthy courtroom scenes, but we learn little.  Director Todd Phillips and Scott Silver's screenplay is pretty shallow.  And the director does nothing to make the trial scenes compelling.  They're tedious and dull, like much of JOKER; FOLIE A DEUX.

But, the film does benefit from a bit of Real Life.  The Luigi Mangione case.   The twenty-six year old is accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year, some time after JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX's release.  Have you see the response on social media? Mangione is being hailed as a hero.  Someone who struck back at the Establishment.  After all, Thompson "had blood on his hands."  For all his company's claim denials.  This is how many in our society and abroad make justifications.  Who they consider "heroes".  Maybe Phillips and Silver called it after all.

I had little hope for this movie, and I have to agree with the diaper rashed devotees.  It fails. Hard at times.  But so did the original, just less so than this one.  Neither were really necessary, in my opinion.  A dark examination of the Joker character could be good fodder for a movie.  In different hands, I'm afraid.  Phillips' effort just feels like a $200 million middle finger to the audience. 

P.S. - If you really want an unlikely musical set in courtrooms, you might seek out an episode of Cop Rock.