Joker: Folie à Deux (Todd Phillips, 2024)
Joker: Folie à Deux is a moody sequel that seems mostly stuck in second gear, albeit with some lovely musical moments.
In fact, Joker: Folie à Deux is one of those movies where the soundtrack is arguably better than the movie. Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga sing their little hearts out, with director Todd Phillips making sure the production never sounds too polished, and it’s wonderful to hear.
The material is mostly comprised of standards from the great American songbook, from What The World Needs Now to If You Go Away and from To Love Somebody to For Once In My Life.
It’s lovely stuff, accompanied by some great visual moments - including an animated prologue by Triplets of Belleville filmmaker Sylvain Chomet. And the fact that it’s almost all ballads isn’t a problem.
But it does emphasize the fact that Joker: Folie à Deux is such a static, slow burn movie that it feels bogged down and hardly ever gets out of second gear.
And when it tries to, in the last part of the movie, it only leads to an - to my mind, at least - emotionally unsatisfying ending.
The story mostly takes place in prison, where Arthur Fleck aka Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) is awaiting trial for the five (or really six) murders he committed in the first movie, while also being treated sadistically by the guards led by an intimidating Brendan Gleason.
Prison is also where Arthur first lays eyes on Lee aka Hayley Quinzel aka Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga), who will become the love of his life.
The moody movie eventually moves to court, the trial being televised live, which leads to hordes of fans crowding the streets outside the courtroom, which will eventually become an important part of the plot (when it finally kicks in).
Inside the courtroom Art the Clown ultimately chooses to defend himself in full Joker make-up, after first firing his long time lawyer (played convincingly by the great Catherine Keener).
In the first movie Joaquin Phoenix quite believably transformed from Arthur Fleck to Joker, in the new there isn’t much room to grow for his character, all psychological evaluations of his character not really adding very much to what we knew from the first movie already.
It must be said though that Phoenix lost an impressive amount of weight for the scenes in prison where he seems to be just skin and bones.
Lady Gaga is a welcome addition to the cast, but even though she is billed as the second lead, it’s basically a rather large supporting role, as she disappears from screen just a little too often. Acting wise, she is very impressive and very much capable of winning an Oscar one day.
All my criticisms aside, there is still a lot to like here and writer-director Phillips and writer Scott Silver make a (relatively) small story go a long way, but for me it ultimately isn’t enough to give it more than three stars.
There is a sequence around the half hour mark where Arthur and Lee could have escaped from prison, and I wish the filmmakers had made that decision.
I don’t know if a movie modeled on Bonnie & Clyde would have been universally beloved, but it’s not only the one I would have liked to see, it was also right there.
It seems though that in the end the filmmakers just want to emphasize the fact that Arthur Fleck slash Joker is a bad guy who shouldn’t be idolized.
If that really is the case they could have just given us the soundtrack album - and kept the movie to themselves.
Note: Joker: Folie à Deux is released next week.