When Todd Phillips unleashed his Taxi Driver-esque take on DC Comics villain Joker five years ago, nobody could’ve expected it to be such a phenomenon. The critical darling not only earned 11 Oscar nominations, winning 2 including Best Actor for Joaquin Phoenix, it earned more than $1B billion at the box office. In the immediate aftermath, it didn’t sound like Phillips was interested in doing a sequel. Warner Bros. was very interested, though. How could they not be? They exercised an option they had with Phoenix, and Phillips, who said he’d do anything to work with the actor again, was warmed up to the idea. But he was going to do it his way. This time, it’d be a musical. Sorta. And so we have Joker: Folie à Deux, a tedious film that doesn’t need to exist and actively seems to resent that it does.
With a frilly title guaranteed to cut the box office in half, Joker: Folie à Deux is a movie that goes out of its way to not give the fans what they want. Phillips pulled this exact same stunt years ago with The Hangover 3, a boring, unfunny crime movie that he wanted to do rather than another hugely successful comedy. Here, rather than give us more of the transgressive, anarchic “man of the people” Arthur Fleck, we get him as a man so conflicted about who he is that he doesn’t amount to much of a character at all. He’s locked up in Arkham for five murders, and has a shot at an insanity plea thanks to his determined attorney (Catherine Keener), but Arthur doesn’t know what to do. She wants to play up the past abuses that forced the Joker persona to emerge. Arthur longs to embrace that side of himself, but to do that would guarantee a guilty verdict and likely death penalty.
Phillips paints a grim portrait of Arkham, and anyone who’s read the DC Comics knows it’s hardly the place to go for rehabilitation. Brendan Gleeson plays the one guard who is somewhat friendly to Arthur, but he does nothing as the others are violently abusive. Fleck, who was skinny before but now looks like he’d lose a weigh-in to a handful of coffee stirrers, escapes from reality into the fantastical musical landscape of his mind.
The early Arkham scenes are ponderous, but strangely compelling for the amount of menace they carry from moment to moment. There’s so much hopelessness that even the slightest spark feels like an erupting volcano. That moment comes when Arthur catches a glimpse of Harleen Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn), played by Lady Gaga, a psychiatric patient in musical therapy class and someone who shares his passion for chaos. The two quickly fall in love, but she wants Arthur to embrace his dark side and stop all of this pretending that there’s any other version of himself.
Joker: Folie à Deux kicks off with promise of a genre-bending examination of Phoenix’s troubled antihero. The film begins with a hilarious Looney Tunes cartoon that reminds us of the psychological and physical damage Arthur had already suffered. Colorful musical interludes, many of them done in Sonny & Cher-style on the Murray Franklin set, break up the doldrums. Gaga’s powerful voice is kept at a low register with the exception of one or two rousing numbers, which is disappointing. But then, this isn’t meant to be a full-on musical experience. Music bonds Arthur and Harleen, they have the same crazy. She’s more manipulative than he is; and Arthur…well, his experience with women is sorely limited.
Phoenix doesn’t seem up for donning the clown make-up again, either. While the physical transformation is jarring, Phoenix is on auto-pilot emotionally. One could say that Arthur being locked away has made him docile and that was the point of the performance, but Phoenix is oddly reserved even in scenes when he shouldn’t be. Gaga doesn’t have much to do, either, as her vast musical gifts are largely put to waste. As a conniving, scheming Lady Macbeth figure she’s very good, though, perhaps channeling some of her hubristic performance from House of Gucci. If her Harley Quinn were to return in some way, it wouldn’t be the worst decision in the world.
Much quicker than it needs to, Joker: Folie à Deux goes from dull, gray prison drama to dull, brown courtroom drama. Matlock this is not. Facing off against District Attorney Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey), Arthur turns the judge’s court into a circus, but a lousy one where nobody is getting any enjoyment. The most devastating emotional moment comes from supporting actor Leigh Gill, who reprises his role as Gary Puddles, a confidante of Arthur’s shaken by the transformation seen in his friend. As crowds rally both inside and outside of the courtroom in support of Arthur, we’re never given any reason why so many would continue to care. Even when the Joker re-emerges, in full bloom in defense of himself, it feels forced and uncertain. There’s nothing interesting about this Arthur Fleck. Phillips and Scott Silver’s screenplay has no clear objective other than to continue Arthur’s story because somebody somewhere else demanded it. And that becomes most clear as Joker: Folie à Deux comes to a close with a sudden, bloody flourish that feels like Phillips emphatically putting his foot down. He should’ve done it much sooner.
Joker: Folie à Deux opens in theaters on October 4th.
