Jonah Naplan   October 3, 2024

There’s simply no reason for “Joker: Folie à Deux” to exist. And the filmmakers, to their shame, know it. Essentially an immediate epilogue to the events of the first movie, it depicts the trial of Arthur Fleck, or the “Joker,” as he’s convicted of five murders (the authorities don’t know that he also killed his mother, making it six). It’s a plot with little narrative or visual nuance, so writer and director Todd Phillips, being the showman that he is, invents some. The result is half a musical, half a courtroom drama, and all unserious and stupid but never entirely boring. Some people are going to hate it, but very few will say they love it. That’s the nature of the thing. I think most will veer more towards the negative side while still cherrypicking aspects to admire and cherish, which is where I am. It’s true that there’s no universe in which it can be called a “good” movie, but any early criticism regarding it as “offensive” or “the worst thing in the world” is probably unreasonable.

Mostly, it’s just redundant, but ultimately harmless. Joaquin Phoenix (who won an Oscar for this role in 2020) steps back into the shoes of Arthur as if it’s only been a fortnight rather than five years since we last left off, but he’s just as insane as ever. If the first “Joker” telegraphed Arthur’s loneliness in a harsh, cruel world, then “Folie à Deux” finally offers him a match. It takes the form of Harleen Quinzel (Lady Gaga), a fellow penitentiary inmate searching for a cause and somebody to confide in. Their “soulmates” arc doesn’t hit as hard as the movie thinks it does, and Phillips positions many musical numbers around the two of them like they’re Tony and Maria or Sky Masterson and Sarah Brown. But more on that chaos later.

At this point in a typical review, I’d probably begin describing the plot, but “Folie à Deux” doesn’t really have one, at least according to what I’d define as a “plot”: a series of main events, closely related together—if not concretely, then abstractly—with a deliberate goal of reaching a finish line. The plotting in this movie is so paper-thin, with very few distinct or intentionally defined events. A lot of the 138-minute runtime is devoted to dream sequences and hallucinations and a lot of other things that aren’t actually “real.” Of course, a lack of realism does not automatically render that stuff bad, but the movie never makes a case for why any of it is important. Nothing more interesting than Joker’s trial, opposed by Gotham City mayor Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) and (sort of?) defended by Arthur’s lawyer Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), unfolds in this movie, and yet it’s still so long and pads itself out with fluff.

What could have easily just been a one-hour-long special streaming on Max to bookend Arthur’s story for curious viewers is instead a feature length, $200 million movie that might have no object for direction or tone but contains a couple toe-tapping hits from The Great American Songbook and enough bold swings to make it easy to admire the ambition alone. No one will argue that “Folie à Deux” isn’t unique or that it doesn’t endeavor in ways that most modern comic book movies would be terrified to. But its will to be something different feels irrelevant when it nearly fails to make anything of it.

All the courtroom stuff is mostly excellent, as characters from the first movie—including Arthur’s former neighbor Sophie (Zazie Beetz) and co-worker Gary Puddles (Leigh Gill)—are brought in to testify as witnesses to Arthur’s murders. The big question is whether Arthur killed these people under sound mind or if Arthur Fleck and “Joker” are two entirely different entities, with the latter taking over uncontrollably due to the former’s mental illness. The case seems to incline more towards the second reading, but the outcome may be tossed up or down by the film’s conclusion depending on how you see it. Speaking of which, the film ends on a note that will make a ton of people super angry in its ambiguity and emergence from the far left field. It’s counterintuitive and pointless and clear evidence of the fact that the filmmakers couldn’t think of any other way to end their already bizarre and aimless film.

The musical numbers aren’t great. Phillips never gives us a real reason for why they’re there or why the story needed to be told this way. They don’t enhance our understanding of the narrative or the characters, including Harley Quinn, who’s given frustratingly little to do in this movie except act as emotional support in the court hearings and occasionally, but not nearly enough, belt her heart out because she’s played by Lady Gaga. Most of the musical interludes are random and have nothing to do with the prior scene. They’re here not to advance the story forward but because they kinda look cool visually and because, well, the plotting is so thin that something had to pad out the runtime. The problem is that they go on forever, periodically pausing the flow of things to become overly “artistic” or “niche” or whatever. Warner Bros. could have easily looked at their own musical filmography, which includes “In the Heights,” “A Star is Born” (starring Gaga) and last year’s superb “Wonka” to figure out how to get these right, but alas, they clearly did not.

It’s obvious that Phillips wanted “Folie à Deux” to be charming in its spontaneity, but the movie is really anything but spontaneous. Every creative choice seems overly manufactured and specifically designed to create an artificial sort of mesmerization. Joker and Harley are deliberately built up as spiritual cousins of Orpheus and Eurydice, scouring the ends of the Earth for each other’s love and matching each other’s intimacy freak. Both Phoenix and Gaga turn in respectable performances and seem committed to the bit, waxing emotional beats in an otherwise emotionless film. The way that Phoenix communicates big feelings underneath his madness and imitates familiar acting techniques (one court scene has him speaking in a Southern drawl, possibly as a reference to Benoit Blanc of the “Knives Out” series) remains impressive, securing his spot on the roster of the most decorated actors working today. The score by returning, Oscar-winning composer Hildur Guðnadóttir is similarly alluring, haunting the film and teasing a hidden depth that’s never fully brought out.

Riding on the overwhelming critical and commercial success of the first “Joker,” “Folie à Deux” forgets to justify itself as a movie and can only rely on what we loved about the predecessor for so long before collapsing. It markets itself as a musical without ever bringing the joy and whimsy of one, and its baseline as a film about law and justice is undermined because of it. Phillips may encourage you to put on a happy face, but there’s little to smile about here.

Now playing in theaters.