Some of you might not remember, but in 2019, some theaters hired security in order to screen director Todd Philips’ Joker film because they were afraid the movie’s call for anarchy would inspire audiences to do...something…though I’m not exactly sure what.
Rest assured, there will be no such security details at screenings of this week’s Joker: Folie à Deux (translated: Madness for Two), a film that seems intent on dissecting the first film’s plot points in a courtroom drama in which Arthur Fleck/Joker’s crimes are gone over with a fine-tooth comb to determine whether he was insane when he committed the murders of five people (one on live television) or whether he was just being evil. Oh, and it’s a musical of sorts.
Until recently, Joker was the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time (supplanted this year by Deadpool and Wolverine), and while I don’t normally get into discussions of box office, I bring that up only to say that there are a whole lot of people who should seriously scale back their expectations if they’re looking for more of the same this time around.
Joaquin Phoenix returns to the Joker role, although if we’re being honest, he’s mostly just Arthur in this outing, and he’s just as scrawny and pathetic and not especially funny, all as he was before. The difference here being he’s world famous—some might even say “popular”—and he has supporters who want to see him free. That includes a fellow inmate at the Arkham institution for the criminally insane, Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), playing something of a dialed-down, slightly dull version of Harley Quinn. But when the two of them finally lay eyes on each other, that’s when the fireworks and music start to burst forth, and that’s when Arthur starts to see himself as less than a comedian and more of a music performer, which is something of a lateral move when you’re crazy.
He’s tortured by the guards at Arkham, especially Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson), who exchanges cigarettes for jokes, but leading up to the trial, Arthur doesn’t talk much, even at his competency hearing. His lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), is pushing hard for an insanity defense, saying that Arthur’s Joker persona is the one who committed the murders and was created after years of physical and sexual abuse in his childhood. That is probably the case, but Arthur seems broken to the core except for when he’s singing.
Most of the musical numbers only take place in Arthur’s head, but they are staged and shot quite beautifully with the actors doing live vocals to give the performances a rough and raw sound that suits the movie. Arthur shouldn’t sound perfect, and Phoenix gives his voice just the right amount of maniacal edge to seem both unbalanced and professional. Naturally, Gaga sounds angelic because that’s how Arthur sees her, and he immediately falls in love.
Once the trial gets started, things take a less fantastical turn. Through a series of witnesses (all questioned by DA Harvey Dent, played by Harry Lawtey), we walk through many of the first-film events rather clinically, and there were times when I was more than a bit baffled by this approach. I love the surprise appearance of Zazie Beetz’s neighbor character Sophie from Joker, but her testimony doesn’t really offer up an new details other than she’s being trolled and threatened by Joker fanboys to the point where she had to move out of Gotham City.
There’s a fun scene in which Arthur’s lawyer sets up an interview with a high-profile, is somewhat aggressive reporter (Steve Coogan) in which Arthur goes into full performance mode hoping to convince the world he’s a tortured soul, but it’s too short, and there aren’t enough moments as gripping in the rest of this excessively long movie.
I love nearly every moment with Lady Gaga in Folie À Deux, simply because hearing her sing brings me joy. And her character’s duplicitous nature is revealed late in the movie to great impact, sending Arthur into something of a tailspin that is rewarding to a degree. But the screenplay from Phillips and Scott Silver offers little in the way of character development or growth, or any level of self-awareness of his shifting state of mind. To make the whole thing seem more desperate, the film looks for any excuse to put Arthur in the clown makeup, so not only do most of the music scenes feature Phoenix in makeup, but when Arthur decides to serve as his own attorney in court, he also somehow gets the judge to agree to go full Joker in the courtroom, because that’s believable.
I understand that Phillips never saw Joker as more than a one-and-done project, and that Warner Bros. probably would have made this movie without him if need be, but there are far too many moments in Folie À Deux where it feels like the filmmaker isn’t even trying. I actually think the musical numbers are some of the film’s best moments, but I wish the screenplay had dug deeper into Arthur’s psyche, as scary as it might be, and truly earned its R rating this time around by freaking us out with the inside of Joker’s mind. And I do not think people are going to feel satisfied with this ending at all. This iteration of Joker entered the world with a bang and exits like a stinky fart, albeit one that sounds in tune.
The film is now playing in theaters.
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