Regardless of its lack of a Batman, the general public’s exhaustion with comedian ebook motion pictures, and a narrative that always felt overly imitative of Martin Scorsese’s work, Todd Phillips’ 2019 Joker was an authorized hit whose field workplace success (and two Oscar wins) all however ensured that there can be a sequel. Folie à Deux, Phillips’ new musical Joker follow-up, feels prefer it is aware of precisely how prepared folks have been to purchase into the primary movie’s darkish energy fantasy. Folie à Deux remembers the best way theatergoers may see Joker’s Arthur Fleck as a disaffected sufferer of the system pushed to homicide by a deeply damaged society.
However somewhat than looking for extra that means within the Joker’s insanity, Folie à Deux brings the metaphorical home lights as much as take a way more negatively crucial have a look at its central anti-villain and the tradition of hero worship. It’s a stable sufficient pitch that might have made for an fascinating comedian collection. However as a film, Folie à Deux is an off-key mess that hardly manages to specific its handful of excellent concepts.
Joker: Folie à Deux continues the story of failed comic Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), essentially the most notorious inmate in Gotham Metropolis’s Arkham Asylum. After two years of being locked up and systematically abused by Arkham’s squad of guards led by Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson), Arthur has change into an unsmiling, much more gaunt shell of his former self. Although folks lastly need to hear Arthur inform jokes, it’s laborious for him to crack clever understanding that district legal professional Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) can be pushing for the demise penalty at his upcoming trial. However as a lot as Arthur would possibly need to dwell on his destiny in quiet solitude, the Joker’s superstar makes it not possible for him to ever have a second of peace.
After Joker and its framing of Arthur as a murderous folks hero, Folie à Deux appears like Phillips stepping again to current him as a person grappling with what it actually means to have given beginning to a burgeoning motion constructed on concepts he doesn’t essentially embody. Everybody noticed Arthur, in clown make-up, shoot a late evening speak present host on nationwide tv — a key second from Joker cleverly recounted in Folie à Deux’s opening animated brief set to “Me and My Shadow.”
For many individuals, that shot solidified the Joker as an idea who spoke to their very own frustrations with the exact same type of methods that failed Arthur. To Arthur’s lawyer Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), enjoying up the Joker as a separate id appears like one of many few methods they may be capable of win their case. However Folie à Deux makes use of Arthur’s catatonic despair to emphasise what his path to stardom actually was: a killing spree that landed him in jail and properly on his strategy to being executed by the state.
Although Gotham tales are at all times primed for whimsical plot twists, there’s a matter-of-fact high quality to Folie à Deux that’s probably going to come back as a disappointment to followers anticipating theatrical bombast. The film very a lot is a courtroom drama a few defendant who appears poised to lose a trial that appears stacked in opposition to him. However you may really feel Phillips making an attempt to jazz issues up and tie collectively Folie à Deux’s free threads about fame being a monstrous phenomenon because it introduces its model of Harleen “Lee” Quinzel (Girl Gaga).
After years of DC making an attempt to evolve the Harley Quinn model past her roots because the Joker’s girlfriend, Folie à Deux takes her again to a lot of the fundamentals. Right here, she’s simply one other inmate at Arkham somewhat than a psychiatrist working for town, however she nonetheless brings coloration and — extra importantly — music into Arthur’s life. On its face, casting Girl Gaga to sing Hollywood requirements as one of the crucial iconic and subversive characters DC has ever churched out was a superb determination. However Gaga’s Lee is basically relegated to the periphery of Folie à Deux’s story in a approach that makes it really feel like Phillips doesn’t actually know what to do along with her outdoors of letting her upstage Phoenix’s Joker in quite a few musical fantasy sequences.
There are some issues that work splendidly about Folie à Deux’s tackle Harley and Joker as a pair, like its many allusions to the best way that her star has usually eclipsed his within the grand scheme of DC Comics IP. Throughout their escapes from actuality — one in all which is styled like a type of selection hour — Arthur’s concern that Lee may be extra in love with the thought of the Joker than him manifests as stealing the present as followers applaud. The clowns’ fantasies assist Folie à Deux higher illustrate Arthur’s insecurity but in addition his hope that Lee may be the primary particular person to actually perceive him. However the movie spends so little time actually constructing Lee right into a concrete presence that you just by no means get a stable sense of what she’s getting out of their relationship.
If Folie à Deux’s musical numbers have been actually pleasant, which may not be a lot of a problem, however for essentially the most half, they’re so missing in whimsy or any sense of enjoyable that it’s laborious to ever get swept up in them. They’re additionally over nearly as quickly as they’ve begun. Then, the film drops you proper again into Arthur’s bleak actuality from which there by no means appear to be any viable routes of escape.
If Joker was a darkish comedy, then Folie à Deux is its dreary, tragic twin with a frown caught on its face. It’s a bitter word for this franchise to finish on however a fantastic reminder that, ultimately, all comedians bomb.