You may find yourself watching Joker: Folie à Deux, wondering if its subtitle (which roughly translates as “a shared madness”) applies to the characters or the filmmakers. Todd Phillips’ sequel to his 2019 hit Joker, which brought lead actor Joaquin Phoenix an Academy Award in the title role, is a huge swing: It’s a courtroom drama/musical in which Phoenix’s incarcerated madman Arthur Fleck/Joker meets up with the equally deranged Harley Quinn (here called Lee, and played by Lady Gaga) as he’s about to stand trial for murder, and they express their mutual love and nihilism by singing (or whispering, for some reason) a lot of mid-century classic songs to each other, very slowly. 

It’s an odd decision, to put it mildly. It’s not that musicals can’t effectively explore darkness (see Sweeney Todd if you doubt); it’s that in order to do so, you have to let people actually sing. Lady Gaga is possessed of a gloriously swooping voice that’s at home in any style of song, but here she spends much of the movie croaking out lyrics in a cramped, scratchy whisper. It makes sense for the character — Lee, who’s in a psychiatric hospital is clearly deeply disturbed — but it’s a waste; why not give us a few more fantasy sequences and really let her sing (the first film had numerous scenes that did a great job of blurring the edges of Arthur’s reality, why not again here)? Phoenix, a passable if small-voiced singer, likewise fails to soar (though — who knew? — turns out he can tap-dance). What both of them ultimately prove is that near century-old show tunes like “That’s Entertainment”, “What the World Needs Now”, and “If My Friends Could See Me Now” can sound thoroughly creepy if you slow them way down; this is, perhaps, not enough of a reason to make a movie. 

 

Taking place a few years after the events of 2019’s Joker, this movie finds Arthur imprisoned, mocked by guards (“You got a joke for us today, freak?”) and, denied his customary Joker makeup, unable to be his true, gleefully psychotic self. But he finds a piece of that self in Lee, who locks eyes with him in a rehab singing class with psychiatric patients (no, it makes no sense that he’d be allowed to do such an activity) and promptly declares her love. “Are you crazy?” he asks her, admiringly.  

 

The film alternates between elaborate fantasy sequences, with Joker and Lee as a sort of deranged Sonny and Cher and the rather more grim reality of the trial. 

There’s plenty of talent on screen here, which makes Folie à Deux all the more maddening; a scene in which Lee applies eyeliner while warbling “I’ve Got the World On a String” is a mesmerizing reminder of Gaga’s uncanny charisma. But ultimately, this is a wild experiment that mostly falls flat. “I don’t want to sing any more,” says Joker near the end; not soon enough.  

 

I personally feel Todd Phillips had no interest in making a sequel to his first Joker. There is a significant lack of effort compared to the first film on display here. It reeks of the studio seeing just how much the first film made (over $1Billion) and essentially mandating another one. All parties involved phoned this in and considering a large part of the film happens in the walls of a penitentiary, this was a collect call, made with no true passion behind it. 

 

A Shared Madness, indeed. 

 

 

3/10. Thoroughly disappointed 

 

Boluwatife Adesina
Website | + posts

Boluwatife Adesina is a media writer and the helmer of the Downtown Review page. He’s probably in a cinema near you.