'Joker: Folie à Deux' Review

Imagine you’re Todd Phillips. At the beginning of the summer of 2019, Avengers: Endgame has become the highest-grossing movie of all time, putting the comic book genre at the peak of its power and cultural relevancy. You have your own comic book movie releasing later in the fall, one that will be a soft “fuck you” to all the genre contemporaries that built themselves upon a pile of special effects, and not the ideas and controversy that you’re bringing to the table. The premiere of the film at the Venice Film Festival, one of the most prestigious in the world, is all set, and everyone is going to lose their minds at the edginess you’re about to unleash.

Instead, your worst fears become realized: people love the movie. The jury at Venice gives it the top prize, the Golden Lion, a historic occasion for this type of film. Apart from more than a few naysayers, critics are hailing it as a revolutionary film for the time. More than a billion dollars flood in from the box office, and awards rain down from the sky. Everywhere you turn, people are clamoring for more.

It’s all wrong. People shouldn’t be enjoying the movie, at least not like this. You had to deal with this in the Hangover franchise, and now it’s time to take the same steps here to correct the course. That’s right, Joker: Folie à Deux is the new The Hangover Part III, a movie filled with so much contempt for its fans that you wonder why it even bothered to please them in the first place. Of course, I could be talking out of my ass about this whole situation. But based on Phillips' desire to always be a subversive rebel and subconscious disdain for success, there’s no other way to explain how much this sequel tries to talk down to those who worshipped at the altar of its predecessor.

Mathematically, that would mean that all the previous detractors would be won over. But the work within Folie à Deux simply isn’t good enough for them. Sure, it still looks pretty, with Lawrence Sher returning as the cinematographer to deliver some immaculately grimy shots. Instead, it’s just the same joke being told again. And no matter how much you try, it’ll never be as funny the second time around.

To give Phillips some credit, this isn’t exactly the same old joke again. Yes, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is still a disillusioned and misunderstood figure within Gotham City, now locked up in Arkham Asylum for the past five years after he murdered all those people. The trial of the century is coming up, and his court-appointed lawyer is mounting the defense that Arthur and Joker are two totally different people. It’s also the defense that Phillips finds himself the most tied to, siding against the people who worshipped Joker and belittled Arthur. Joker isn’t cool, he’s a murderer who stands for nothing but chaos, all while Arthur sits alone waiting for the tiniest amount of compassion. And we pass him over every day, opting to tune in to revel in the juicy details about the violence and misery enacted by someone who doesn’t deserve an ounce of our attention.

Furthering the case of Arthur’s split personality is his increasingly frequent outbursts into song and dance. Each of them serves as the creative outlet to which words can’t do justice, although the prospect of a $200 million dark comic-book musical is much more realized on paper than here. “Dour” would be the word of choice to describe each set piece, with Phoenix and Lady Gaga, appearing here as Joker’s #1 fan Harley Quinn, providing the only semblance of passion. After a while, they all start to blend together into one meh soup, a symptom of the on-the-nose messaging and Phillips’ inability to craft a catchy setpiece. It’s much easier to appreciate them within the franticness of a trailer rather than the methodicism of the final product.

There is something to be said about this movie’s dedication to adhering to its DNA despite all the scope and scale placed upon it. It desperately wants to do something different, although it’s not quite sure what that is. It’s played both sides, but instead of doubling its profits, it exponentially multiplied its losses.