JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX - GOOD IDEAS, POOR EXECUTION

Warning: This review contains heavy spoilers!

After its release in 2019, Todd Philips' "Joker" (2019) took the world by storm with its refreshingly unique portrayal of DC's most iconic supervillain, garnering 1 billion at the box office with near immense appraisal from fans and critics alike. Although the film is far from perfect, and its similarities to Scorsese films such as "Taxi Driver" (1976) and "King of Comedy" (1982) are far too prominent to brush off as coincidences, Joker remains a powerful critique on how American society treats the mentally ill, and a deep exploration on the inherent desire for a global symbol in order to draw attention to those who suffer at the hands of the upper echelon.

Many consider the film to have a perfect ending, leaving no loose threads (apart from a slightly gratuitous Batman tease) that should warrant further development. For that reason, it came as a shock to many when Todd Philips revealed his plans for "Joker: Folie À Deux" (2024), a dark romance narrative masked in a musical, featuring Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, the titular girlfriend of the Joker. Being such a drastic pivot from the first film's gritty crime thriller, the months leading up to the sequel's release sparked prominent debates of whether or not it would be able to deliver in the same way that its predecessor did 5 years ago.

THE STORY

Joker: Folie À Deux takes place 2 years after the events of Joker, where Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is currently residing in Arkham Asylum and awaiting his trial for the murder of Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) and the three young men on the subway that sparked Gotham's adoration of Joker in the first place. The film starts out strong with a musical cartoon that harkens back to old Looney Tunes shorts, depicting Arthur and the Joker as two separate entities that inevitably take the blame as one. This internal conflict is the anchor for the entire movie's narrative; whether or not Joker is a split personality in Arthur's mind or that he consciously committed all those brutal acts himself.

From there, Folie À Deux shifts into a slow burn that explores Arthur's time in Arkham, and the frequent abuse he suffers from the guards and prisoners alike. Immediately, it's clear that this version of Arthur is far from how he was depicted in Joker's ending, as he's now become an instrument of entertainment for the authoritative figures around him rather than the free-thinking rebel he became in the first film. Arthur's mundane schedule of taking pills, smoking occasional cigarettes and meeting with his lawyer is eventually broken once the guards sign him up for the Asylum's choir group as a joke, and where he quickly becomes infatuated with a fellow prisoner: Harleen "Lee" Quinzel (Lady Gaga).

We are told that Lee was admitted to Arkham due to her past as an arsonist, and in that time she developed an admiration for the Joker after hearing about the Murray Franklin incident. After several songs about how much Arthur feels connected to Lee, and a failed escape attempt involving a burning film reel, the two spark a proper relationship in the midst of Arthur's trial, coincidentally around the same time that Lee gets rehabilitated and released from Arkham. From there, the film suddenly shifts into a courtroom drama, in which Arthur must prove to District Attorney Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) and the people of Gotham that his murders were completely unwilling. Initially supportive, Lee quickly grows bitter at the inherent "victimisation" of Arthur, and eventually convinces him to fire his lawyer (Catherine Keener) and represent himself as the Joker.

The film reaches a brief high point following Joker's proper re-introduction into the narrative, leading to two of the best musical numbers in the movie, a reveal that Lee is actually an esteemed psychologist that checked herself into Arkham willingly and a powerful scene in which Joker confronts Gary (Leigh Gill), the only character in the first film that was nice to him before his mental breakdown. Upon realising that his actions only made Gary's life far worse, and getting violently beaten/assaulted by the guards at Arkham, Arthur suddenly comes to the conclusion that there is no split personality, but that the Joker still isn't his "real" self. He's found guilty by the jury, and right as Lee resentfully leaves the trial, a bomb detonates within the courtroom triggered by Joker's followers outside in an attempt to break him out. A disoriented Arthur barely manages to escape his rabid fans, and after being abandoned by Lee on the same staircase he danced on in the first film, he's arrested and brought back to the Asylum.

No longer the Joker, and no longer trying to drown out his reality with music, the film ends with Arthur in a somewhat "peaceful" state of mind, right until he receives a visitor but is promptly stopped by another inmate (Connor Storrie), one who previously admired Joker throughout the whole film, and asks if he can listen to a joke he came up with: "A psychopath walks into a bar and sees a sad clown drowning out his sorrows. The psychopath offers to buy him a drink, and the clown says he can get him whatever he wants. The psychopath concludes by getting him what he f*cking deserves."

The inmate stabs Arthur several times, alluding back to Joker killing Murray Franklin with a similar punchline. As he bleeds out on the floor, the inmate proceeds to violently carve a smile onto his face, now upholding the anarchist alter ego that Arthur rejected...

THE GOOD

Before diving into Joker: Folie À Deux's myriad of problems and bizarre creative decisions, it's still important to acknowledge what the film does right, in lieu of recent critics calling it "the worst comic book movie ever made". It's immediately evident that the film's strongest element is its cinematography, brilliantly shot and composed by Lawrence Sher. Even minute-long sequences of Arthur doing nothing but staring outside his window in Arkham Asylum are always visually breathtaking, and accompanied by the frequent use of Hildur Guðnadóttir's beautifully evocative score from the first film, there isn't a single moment in the film where its visual palette felt dull and uninteresting. Furthermore, both Phoenix and Gaga manage to deliver equally entrancing performances, clearly stretching the film's script as far as it can go whilst adding their own flair and dramatization to the story.

Although it falls relatively flat in its efforts (more on that later), Folie À Deux at least tries to express a different message than the first film, rather than relying on what made 2019's Joker so good to begin with. In a time where so many comic book movie sequels feel like repetitive copy-pastes of better projects that released before, I can respect Todd Philips' effort to tell a story about how public adoration can deteriorate one's inner psyche, and turn them into nothing more than a reflection of different people's ideas and values rather than their own person. In a way, where the first film showed us glimpses of Arthur's psychosis amidst a cruel reality, Folie À Deux takes us directly into the bizarre, colorful mess of Arthur's mind, in which he represses reality with theatrical dance numbers and hallucinations of stardom.

WASTED POTENTIAL

If I had to describe Joker: Folie À Deux with two words, they would be "wasted potential". On paper, a twisted musical/romance featuring Lady Gaga as the Joker's manically enamored girlfriend sounds incredible, yet the film not only fails to reach any sort of expectations it might have set, it instead masks itself as a much better movie in hopes that audiences will be too focused on its pseudo-intellectuality to notice its most glaring flaws.

Lee hardly feels like a real character, and although it might be because she serves as a less-than-subtle representation of the audience and how they view the character of Joker, it instead gives off the impression that a large majority of her scenes were simply cut during post-production. Gaga is hardly given any time to truly flex her musical talent, even during her solo musical numbers. Lee's pregnancy (which is only brought up twice in the entire film) is so inconsequential by the ending that it will only leave you wondering why it was even included in the first place. While the prospect that she lied to Arthur about her origins as a member of the upper class is an interesting idea in and of itself, it's barely even explored beyond one scene where Arthur eventually forgives her for lying to him. Todd Philips' intention to portray Lee as a psychotic manipulator is partially evident, but it feels like there needed to be so much more time dedicated to her parasitic adoration of Joker to truly hammer in how deceitful and duplicitous she truly is.

When it comes to Arthur, it's clear how much fans and critics alike were disappointed to see him return to his more "weakened" state rather than truly seeing him embrace the mantle of Joker, like the first film ended. His role in the movie almost reads like a gigantic middle finger from Philips to both Warner Bros and the audience for caring more about a comic book villain than a personal story about mental health and how society affects it, expressing how like Lee, everyone will simply toss Arthur aside after he no longer wishes to associate himself with his crazier side. It may be a valid critique, but it's definitely not what many were expecting when watching a sequel to a movie where Arthur embraces that mantle to begin with, leaving it all the more confusing as to why he would abandon the global acceptance he gained in the first film. Many have tried to argue how Arthur "never wanted" to become Joker at all, but after rewatching 2019's Joker to gain a better perspective, I still can't help but view Arthur's arc in Folie À Deux as flat, unnecessary and especially not "justified".

THE MUSIC

For being a film so insistent on music to drive its narrative and central themes, it's almost baffling how Joker: Folie À Deux only comes out the other end with only two notable songs to its name. Aside from the "Joker rule" and the tapdancing sequence during the "build a mountain" number, there wasn't a single other song that kept my attention throughout and made me eager to listen to it again in the future. In general, the film's musical numbers feel wholly unnecessary and strangely boring, as they will often bring important scenes to a halt just for Arthur or Lee to sing near-incomprehensible lyrics about feelings we've already explored in great detail. Unironically, Folie À Deux is at its strongest when its main characters aren't saying ANYTHING, such as the "Hotel Arkham" dance or Arthur's disoriented escape from his followers, which isn't the strongest selling point for a film starring one of the most popular singers on the planet.

THE ENDING

Even looking past Folie À Deux's problems and drawbacks, the film truly shoots itself in the foot with its laughably half-baked ending. If 2019's Joker had a slightly gratuitous tease in the death of Bruce's parents, its sequel has one of the most indefensible, borderline worthless scenes in any comic book movie ever made, which leaves nothing but a bitter taste in your mouth and the souring of both Joker movies as a whole. The idea that Joker is a "symbol" isn't unique to Todd Philips' iteration of the character, but having the real Joker kill off Arthur simply so that the timeline "makes sense" feels unmerited and borderline lazy, especially since the second Joker had next to no importance in the film's overall narrative.

VERDICT

Joker: Folie À Deux is a film with a lot to say, but one that hardly allows itself anytime to say it. Interesting ideas and concepts are muddled into a blatantly disappointing mess that drowns everything good about the film beneath a slew of strange creative choices and a baffling narrative direction. It's still far from the worst comic book movie ever made, but it remains as a substandard shell of what came before.

5.5/10