If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if “La La Land,” “Taxi Driver” and the series finale for ‘Better Call Saul” were blended together, thrown in a microwave and left to sour behind a radiator, you may be in luck.
“Joker Folie à Deux,” Director Todd Phillips’s long-awaited sequel to the 2019 Oscar-winning film “Joker,” answers that question to the tune of an anticipated 150 million to 200 million dollar loss for Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
Boasting a 32 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes (a far cry from the 68 percent enjoyed by its 2019 predecessor) and a current standing as the worst superhero-centric box office flop in recent history since Marvel’s “Morbius” in 2022, “Folie à Deux” is a film that does not have a solid grip on what it is trying to do.
The film, which reprises Joaquin Phoenix’s role as Arthur Fleck/Joker, and introduces Harley Quinn, played by pop star Lady Gaga, takes place in the aftermath of the first film’s conclusion, with Fleck undergoing a criminal trial for the murders committed in the first film. The plot serves as an origin story for the relationship between the Joker and Harley Quinn and takes the form of a musical.
“Folie à Deux” limps across the finish line with a 138-minute runtime, while managing to offer audiences nothing that was not already delivered masterfully in 2019.
The original film leaned heavily into exploring the consequences of under-funded mental health services and portrayed Fleck as an extreme, yet sympathetic product of societal apathy. The sequel centers broadly around the role his mental health played in the character’s reprehensible actions, yet never really makes a cohesive point.
The audience is re-introduced to Fleck as a shell of his former self, agreeable and docile while incarcerated. His criminal defense is based on a split-personality claim, but the film fails to embrace and build upon the mental health aspects of his circumstance, opting to let it simmer in the background while the real plot, his obsessive romantic dynamic with Quinn drives the plot forward to his predictable demise.
By the time Fleck fully commits to abandoning his Joker persona, the character development he shows comes across as rushed and unearned, with little to set him up for such a redeeming paradigm shift. Other than one refreshingly well-done confrontation between Fleck and Leigh Gill’s character Gary Puddles, which opens the tiniest of cracks through which a sliver of empathy can be seen, nothing really leads up to such a change.
This would be fine if Phillips intended to steer the story away from the gritty social critiques that immortalized the first chapter and develop the canon into a traditional Batman-versus-bad guy franchise. Instead, audiences are insulted by a last-minute plot twist that undoes any hope for that, leaving us with a self-contained story that feels shallow, rushed and lacking when compared to its predecessor.
The decision to make it a musical only adds to the confusion. While Phoenix and Gaga deliver outstanding performances as both actors and singers, the musical numbers do little to further the plot. The “Joker” franchise is not necessarily unqualified to utilize musical numbers to drive the story forward, as Fleck is an unreliable narrator, blurring reality and fantasy in his mind. In this case, many of the musical numbers, with a few notable exceptions (including an original number written by Gaga herself) just come across as abrupt fillers.
The acting may be the only thing worth applauding. Phoenix and Gaga do manage to salvage their characters from a script that appears to be written by an orange cat walking on a keyboard. They have managed to deliver the world-class performances they are known for, and save the film from descending directly into the depths of “unwatchable.”
Ryan Pacheco can be contacted at
