Sour and contemptuous, Joker: Folie À Deux fits right in with the original

What’s next for the Joker in a world that doesn’t yet have a Batman? Todd Phillips’ 2019 phenomenon Joker still took place in Gotham City and involved the wealthy Wayne family, but set the story years before son Bruce might first don the cowl, in a purportedly more realistic universe—leaving an ending where Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) emerges all dressed up with no place to go but Arkham State Hospital. The idea that this standalone origin story would nonetheless inspire a big-budget sequel might have, at first, seemed like a betrayal of its serious-movie ethos. But a movie about the fully-formed Joker unleashed is also compatible with the recurring image, across multiple Phoenix films, of the actor running in desperate search of some uncertain freedom. The Joker is forever on the run—“chasing cars,” as the Heath Ledger version described it—and with such a splashy public debut, no asylum could truly hold him. What Joker: Folie À Deux presupposes is: Maybe it could? 

Phillips and his co-writer Scott Silver return to Arthur with a surprisingly ‘80s-style sequel reset. Now, instead of put-upon, harassed, and overlooked by the hostile city around him as he shuts down mentally, Arthur is put-upon, harassed, and looked over by the hostile system that envelopes him as he, yep, shuts down mentally. Abused by guards led by Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson) as he awaits his murder trial in the highest-security wing of Arkham, Arthur still yearns for the love and understanding that has eluded him, despite his accumulation of many fans on the outside. 

It turns out he has one on the inside, too: He meets Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) while passing through a lower-security area of the facility, where she’s been committed for less murderous reasons. Lee—short for Harleen, which can also be shortened to Harley, in case you’re not aware of some key Batman/Joker lore—recognizes Arthur, seeing him as a kindred spirit. In classic meta-sequel fashion, she reads as a fan of the first movie; when she begins a sentence with “when I first saw Joker…” she’s referring to seeing Arthur’s clown-painted alter ego on TV, but it’s phrased to sound as if she’s talking about her first viewing of a certain Best Picture nominee. (This Arthur has only been featured in a presumably tawdry TV movie, mentioned repeatedly but unseen.) 

During their first conversation, the two troubled souls trade whispered, warbled bars of “Get Happy,” a signature tune of Judy Garland. Their de facto first date involves watching the Fred Astaire musical The Band Wagon (Arkham’s film programmers have surprising cinephile cred!), though it’s interrupted by a fire that Lee sets. Soon they’re clinching, images from the film projected on them like heavenly light, and performing song-and-dance numbers that may be at least partially staged inside their heads.

Yes, the Joker sequel is a musical, sort of. It’s also a courtroom drama, sort of—and that qualification doesn’t come from an unwillingness to put in the hours. In fact, viewers may feel like they’ve spent days or weeks inside the dreary courtroom where Arthur’s murder trial goes on, and on. Several scenes even bring back multiple characters from the first movie for a diminished re-litigation of its events, like a less funny version of the Seinfeld series finale. The “sorta” factor doesn’t derive from the courtroom so much as the drama, which is in short supply throughout, because so much of the movie depends on hand-waving story details that don’t make much sense. Maybe this is a callback to Arthur’s first-movie delusions; there are multiple points where hallucinations would be the clearest explanation for characters’ behavior and reactions to one another.

What keeps Joker: Folie À Deux from becoming a full-blown musical, on the other hand, is harder to tell, because it’s the one area where the movie indulges unabashed fantasy rather than just being kind of stupid. Phillips has never seemed like a filmmaker with a particular affinity for the musical form, yet he does splash The Band Wagon all over Joker and Lee’s faces—and, moreover, stages some mesmerizing minimalist duets between the alluringly mismatched Phoenix and Gaga. A violent courtroom fantasy casts a particularly dreamlike spell, maybe in part because it interrupts another tedious trial scene. There’s also a variety-show spoof and an imagined nightclub; these sequences go further with their inspirations than any of the Scorsese karaoke from the first movie. 

At least, they do until Phillips inevitably curtails them. (The more drawn-out courtroom number is a welcome exception.) Phillips is weirdly eager to snap Arthur back to reality and offer the usual implied lecture about musicals peddling escapist bullshit, using poor Lady Gaga as his instrument. Stepping into a role largely defined by the character’s voice—her origins on Batman: The Animated Series are owed in large part to the vocalizations of actress Arleen Sorkin—Gaga, dodging her art-diva rep, plays a quieter Harley Quinn than her more ostentatious predecessors. Even her powerful singing voice is often muted, which lends her musical performances a tremulous beauty, as if she’s excitedly working up the nerve to fully ignite. Over in the real world, she channels her obsession with Arthur into bespoke proto-Harley costumes, beaming from the sidelines at her lover-slash-hero, who is emboldened by her love to shtick it up in court (much to the consternation of his lawyer, played thanklessly by Catherine Keener).

But that’s just the problem: Joker: Folie À Deux works overtime to keep Arthur and Lee apart, while assuring that the only truly exciting sections of the movie aren’t really, fully happening. It does have its reasons for this construction—mainly having to do with the ultimate thinness of Lee’s character, very much in keeping with the dim view of women as shifty, opportunistic manipulators that pervades other Todd Phillips films. (This version of Harley Quinn is easily the most interesting woman in any of his movies, and he inherited her.) 

Not to worry, though; it isn’t just Harley Quinn fans who will be annoyed and possibly insulted by the filmmaker’s sour whims. The degree to which Phillips undermines fan expectations would be admirable if Joker: Folie À Deux wasn’t also something of a slog—and if its every creative decision didn’t feel strangely affectionless, as if coldly regarding its own reference points with seething contempt, even while examining them through the capable lens of cinematographer Lawrence Sher. As before, empty pastiche abounds: The movie opens with a Looney Tunes-like cartoon that doesn’t bother imitating the art or gag style of an actual Warner Bros. classic. As the Wayne family forged half-hearted comics connections in the first movie, Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) has a pointless role here. The specific era of pre-rock standards evoked by many of the song choices never fully pays off. Joaquin Phoenix, who won a damn Oscar for this role last time, spends an inordinate amount of time throwing back his head while taking long drags from a cigarette. Does Phillips enjoy a single minute of this? Is he mad at the people who do? Joker: Folie À Deux neatly divides up its nothingness for different audience segments, making sure that hardly anyone will leave satisfied. It’s almost a perverse joke worthy of its subject—or it would be, if this Joker actually joked around more. Instead, the desire to alienate seems tailored both to Phillips’ idea of the character and, possibly, the filmmaker’s own feelings of post-comedy persecution: He’s faced with no choice but to turn his biggest-ever success into another tragic snit.

Director: Todd Phillips
Writer: Scott Silver, Todd Phillips
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Zazie Beetz
Release Date: October 4, 2024