Joker Folie à Deux: A Chaotic Joke With No Punchline

I want to clarify something before I get into my review. The incredibly volatile fan backlash to DC's Joker: Folie à Deux has absolutely nothing to do with the actual quality of the film. Rather, if my observations about movie fan behavior over the years are accurate, it has everything to do with a very strange ending that didn't really need to happen the way it did but also didn't necessarily affect the overall quality of the film in any way. Now, that's not to say that the film is good just because the vitriol happens to be misguided. Folie à Deux is not a well-written film in just about any way, and so a lot of the people who disliked the film have what I believe to be the right view of it for what I see as all the wrong reasons. No, I don't think Todd Phillips hates you and your offspring. I just think he could have written a much better movie. That's not to say that all is gloom and doom in the world of the Singing, Dancing Clown Prince of Crime. There are a couple of aspects to this film that I actually really liked, and I want to be sure to give the things I liked about this movie a voice alongside my criticisms, because even if this film was a big swing and a big miss, at least it's swinging big, and I am starting to hope that perhaps this film can set a good example for originality when it comes to big, spectacle-heavy superhero movies. Because Lord knows that the Infinity Saga's filmmaking habits, if you can even call them that, could go kick rocks years ago.

Alright, so to throw out the obligatory spoiler-free synopsis, Joker: Folie à Deux is a sequel to Todd Phillips's much-loved and much-maligned 2019 drama about one of many origin stories of Batman's archnemesis, the infamous Joker, also known as Arthur Fleck. It follows Arthur as he finally meets a kindred spirit, the love of his life Harleen Quinzel, while incarcerated in Arkham Asylum, as well as the chaos that ensues from their romance.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I walked into this film, and the few expectations I did have were immediately subverted by the very first sequence in the film. For all of its flaws, I can confidently say that Folie à Deux is utterly unlike any movie I have ever seen before, and this opening sequence was something of a case study on what this drama-musical holds dear: artistic vision. For better or for worse, at no point did this film ever feel like it was bound by any perceived obligation or studio mandate. It kind of just did whatever the heck it wanted to whenever the heck it wanted to do it, and for as many problems as this created, I must say that I was thoroughly surprised to see this kind of filmmaking from a studio this large, and it does make me wonder if, perhaps, brighter days are ahead for studios such as DC when it comes to the idea of giving artistic license to individual filmmakers. One can hope. The flair of the movie is pretty awesome, and I must say that it was very cool to see this play out. Unfortunately, that's about where the good aspects of this movie end. The pacing of this film is absolutely horrendous, and the movie just kind of lurches from setpiece to setpiece without much of an end goal in mind, and with absolutely no regard for narrative integrity. The first half-hour or so of this film is pretty much entirely lacking in momentum, and while some might say that a slow start is needed for the establishment of characters and world, I would still say that the film moved way too slowly in its opening portions, and I would also argue that it didn't need to go to all the trouble to portray to us Arthur's character in the first act - that's what the first Joker movie was for. In addition, I must say that I actually didn't really like Joaquin Phoenix's performance in this movie, and that sounds strange even to me as it rolls off of my keyboard, because he won best actor at the Oscars in 2020 for his spellbinding take on the exact same character. Unfortunately, Phoenix often looks what I can only describe as bored in this film, and unfortunately, once a much-needed spark of chaos is ignited in the prison, it's quickly snuffed out by a quick, pointless, circular chase scene that accomplishes absolutely nothing except making it seem like the movie's doing something with its story when, in reality, it's actually not.

Now, for all the film's flaws, I do have to compliment the artistic vision of the film again, which is indeed not relegated to the opening moments, and able to relatively sustain a pretty impressive vision of how Arthur views the world throughout. At its very best, this visual style reminds me of La La Land and is actually one aspect that the film consistently executes better than the original movie did. Now, Phoenix's vocals in the songs aren't much to write home about, at least not as far as good things to say are concerned, but Gaga consistently and predictably does very well with her musical numbers, which most definitely injects energy into the film in places where it would otherwise feel deader than a doornail. But in the chaotic nature of this movie, the musical aspects of Folie à Deux don't quite stick the landing, and that feels strange to say because they are one of the things that give this movie what little life it does have. Despite some great dream sequences with music, the musical numbers set in the real world just feel wildly out of place, which I can tell is a situation the filmmakers worked to avoid, and unfortunately weren't entirely able to. And even with the change of pace that crops up now and again, the film still feels like it's dragging. I felt every minute of this movie's runtime, and that denouncement isn't exactly one I would wish upon a comic book movie. I just found myself wishing that Folie à Deux allowed itself to be a little more, you know, fun. Unfortunately, I can't even say that the film sticks the landing in the climax because it doesn't. The way Arthur's predicament resolves is such a cop-out in the cheapest, laziest, and lamest of ways, and even though the movie does walk this "solution," if you can even call it that, back later on, the damage had already been done, and the whole situation just left a horribly bad taste in my mouth. When it comes to the much-hated ending of the film, I actually didn't treat this particular aspect with as much disdain as some other people did, but I can't say I loved it either. I was just weirdly cold to the ending of the film, and that was probably just due to the fact that I was kind of ready for the whole thing to be done.

All in all, the critic in me wanted to completely dismiss this film, while the artist in me wanted to honor it at points, and frankly, I don't think I'm able to do either of those things. Now, the final score you'll see at the end of this review won't exactly be high, but it's more reflective of my critical viewpoint than it is my artistic one. The writing of Folie à Deux left a lot to be desired, and the film didn't tie up even the few plot threads it decided to run with while just puttering around the rest of the time from useless conversation to useless conversation to musical number. In addition, there is some more adult content in this movie than in the last one, namely coarse language and violence that's pretty straightforward for an R-rated flick, some full-frontal male nudity in a non-sexual context, one coerced same-sex kiss that's played by some of the inmates at Arkham for cruel laughs, and even one sex scene with thrusting that's seen from the shoulders up, which isn't exactly something I expected to see in a movie like this. So as far as parental guides for these kinds of films go, I hope this one stands out to you a little more than it might usually in a review like this, because this movie does, in a lot of ways, take its R-rated material further than its predecessor. But I digress. Critically, the last two-thirds of the story is where what remains of this floundering ship of a film finally breaks up rather than righting itself, and left me feeling rather disappointed in the whole ordeal. Granted, not all is a lost cause. The acting is overall relatively solid, at its best when it comes to Lady Gaga and her portrayal of Harley Quinn, and I can't shake the feeling that a lot of the low audience scores are due to disappointment over not getting the end the fans wanted, while some low critic scores can be attributed to the elites capitalizing on fan backlash to bash a franchise they hated before this movie was even released.

However, none of that changes the fact that Joker: Folie à Deux is ultimately just a rambling joke of a movie in desperate need of a punchline.

Joker: Folie à Deux - 3/10

Hebrews 13:3