Woof, Joker: Folie À Deux is rocking a D CinemaScore

As we’ve noted on more than one occasion, a film’s CinemaScore—the letter grade produced by the Vegas-based movie marketing film, which issues exit polls to movie viewers—is rarely a straight metric of quality. There have been very good, or at least extremely interesting movies (Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! is a prime example) that have absolutely tanked the metric by scandalizing cineplex goers, and quite a few boring ones that have scored its coveted A+. But CinemaScore is a pretty good measure of whether early audience members were pissed off right after walking out of a theater, and so it feels mildly instructive to note that Todd Phillips Joker: Folie À Deux has just received a rare D grade from the polling company, the lowest such grade a comic book adaptation has ever received. (Take that, 2015 box office disaster Fantastic Four!)

This has not been a good review weekend, period, for Phillips’ sequel, which has seen critics and fans in rare lockstep in issuing a joint “Todd, what are you doing, man?” to the new film. Starring a returning Joaquin Phoenix and newcomer Lady Gaga, the movie has caught Fleck/flack from all sides for presenting a strangely un-energetic follow-up to the 2019 original’s shocking success. The musical numbers were probably always going to be a sticking point, but more than that, it simply sounds like Phillips has made a movie uninterested in pleasing either those who saw the merits in his cautionary, Scorsese-light tale of a society producing its own destruction through widespread neglect of its most vulnerable people, or the people who just wanted to watch a clown dance on the stairs and murder people.

We’ll have a full box office report on Monday, but for now, it’s looking like Folie À Deux is going to arrive well below projections, having brought in just $20 million in previews and Friday night screenings. It also feels worth noting that, despite opening to a ton of controversy over its subject matter, the first Joker posted a CinemaScore of B+ back in the day, meaning that it at least got a thrill out of the people inclined to go see it. This time, uh, not so much.