What’s It About
Picking up after the events of the 1980s-set initial installment, Joker: Folie à Deux finds Fleck (Phoenix) locked away in Arkham Asylum for his role in the massive Gotham City uprising that led to the deaths of talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) as well as Bruce Wayne’s parents, Thomas and Martha.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
The new Joker movie, Folie à Deux, is the second one after the 2019 Joker film that got people talking. Todd Phillips, who made both, tried something really different this time. He turned it into a musical with Lady Gaga in it. It’s not what fans thought they’d get or what they were hoping for after the gritty, dark first movie. The film’s a big mess, like a puzzle with pieces from different boxes. It’s not just a bit off – it’s really frustrating to watch, like trying to follow a story someone’s telling while they keep changing the subject. It feels like two different movies stuck together: one about a trial, which could be interesting on its own, and one with songs, which might work as a separate film. But together, they clash like oil and water. There’s not much actual story, maybe enough for less than an hour of average movie time. So they keep putting in song and dance bits to make it longer, like stretching a short story into a novel by adding lots of descriptions. These musical parts look okay – they’ve got nice costumes and some fancy camera work. But the rest of the movie looks pretty bad; it seems like they spent all their money on the songs and forgot about everything else. The story picks up right where the last movie left off. Arthur Fleck (the Joker) is locked up in Arkham Asylum, that creepy place for criminals who have a mental illness in Gotham City. He’s waiting to be tried for all the people he killed in the last movie – the talk show host, his old boss, and those guys on the subway. In Arkham, he meets Harley Quinn, played by Lady Gaga. She’s a new patient or maybe a doctor (it’s not very clear). They fall in love, but it’s a crazy, messed-up kind of love, full of ups and downs like a roller coaster. Some of the musical scenes are fun to watch, like one that copies an old Sonny and Cher routine from TV. There’s glitz and glamour, with big dance numbers that look like old Hollywood musicals. But it’s weird because Lady Gaga can sing really well (she’s a pop star, after all), and Joaquin Phoenix (who plays Joker) really can’t. It’s like watching a duet between a professional singer and someone doing karaoke for the first time. The movie jumps between what’s real and what’s in Joker’s head, so it’s hard to know what’s actually happening. Is he really in love? Is he even really in Arkham? The songs they use, like ‘For Once In My Life’ and ‘Get Happy,’ are old classics, but they don’t seem to mean much in the story. They don’t help tell us what’s happening or how the characters feel. Nothing much happens in the movie for long stretches. There’s going to be a trial to see if Joker should get the death penalty, and there are people outside supporting him like he’s some kind of hero. The movie seems to ask Joker fans, “Why do you like this crazy killer so much? Don’t you see how messed up that is?” It’s like the movie is judging its own audience. It’s also confusing because we don’t know when this is happening in the Batman world. There’s no Batman or Robin, so it’s hard to know where this fits with other DC movies. Is this before Batman shows up? Is it in a different universe? The movie doesn’t give us any clues. Joaquin Phoenix is usually a great actor – he won an Oscar for the first Joker movie, but he just makes weird faces and yells a lot here. He twists his body into strange shapes and laughs that creepy laugh, but it doesn’t feel like a real character anymore. Lady Gaga, who’s been good in other movies like A Star is Born, doesn’t do a great job either. She tries to be quirky and dangerous, but she’s not as memorable or fun to watch as Margot Robbie was as Harley Quinn in other movies. In the end, Joker: Folie à Deux is a weird movie that’s hard to understand and not much fun to watch. It tries to do too many different things – be a serious drama, a love story, a musical, and a comic book movie all at once. But instead of being a cool mix, it ends up being a confusing mess that might leave you wondering why you watched it at all.
OUR RATING – A PIERROT 3