Joker: Folie à Deux Flips Off Fans and Haters Alike
In Joker: Folie à Deux, his follow-up to the smash hit and Academy Award nominee Joker, writer/director Todd Phillips not only critiques his previous film and its “bad fans,” but also turns it into a musical in which Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker (a.k.a. Arthur Fleck) sings his way through Gotham with the biggest, baddest fan of all, Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn (a.k.a. Lee Quinzel.) I found the first Joker a shallow imitation of Taxi Driver which deliberately ignored the way that racism fuels domestic terrorism in favor of the inaccurate “he was mean because he was bullied” trope. But I gave this one the benefit of the doubt for the sheer audacity of its ambitions. Plus, I love musicals and I love Harley Quinn from Arleen Sorkin’s career-defining performance on Batman: The Animated Series (not to mention Margot Robbie and Kaley Cuoco’s takes on the character).
I was wrong to be so generous: Joker: Folie à Deux is a joyless slog which not only resents its audience, but resents the very fact of its existence.
Five years since the last film ended, Arthur has been rotting in Arkham Prison while awaiting his trial for the murder of talk-show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), as well as the other murders he committed. But don’t worry about not having seen Joker before going in — you’ll hear the plot of that film repeated in every other scene. And this is not an exaggeration: Joker: Folie à Deux may be the first sequel I’ve ever seen in which half the run time is just characters describing things that happened in the first film. I’ve seen comparisons made to the final episode of Seinfeld, in which Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer were put on trial by everyone who wronged them in a clip show that remains controversial to this day, but at least we got to rewatch some funny scenes in that (even if it killed Frank Sinatra.)
Sheer repetition of the plot is not all Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver are after. They are also trying to critique the first film itself, in which Arthur inspired Joker fans and imitators to worship him, both in the film and among its actual fans online. This extends to Harley, who meets Arthur in a prison singing group. Far removed from the psychiatrist-gone-wrong created by Paul Dini, here Harley is depicted the ultimate “bad fan,” one who we later learn got herself committed to Arkham just to meet Arthur after having watched the TV movie made about him (which, by the way, we never get to see clips of. If they had shown clips of the Joker film re-created to look like cheesy 80s TV movies, it would be the best stuff in the movie.)
The Joker/Harley dynamic, beloved by fans both for the sheer anarchy they unleash and the way their relationship captures the tragic cycle of abuse, could have made for a compelling film, especially with the charismatic Gaga as Harley. Criminally underused, she brings the only moments of light to the film, and if she’d starred in a stand-alone musical about Harley, it could potentially be a blast. Hell, a live-action film trying to capture the Joker/Harley of the animated series, done with musical numbers, has endless possibilities.
Instead, Phillips confines us to primarily two locations: Arkham, and the courtroom where Arthur is prosecuted by D.A. Harvey Dent, and which Harley attends every day as a groupie. Not only does this deny us the relationship promised on the posters for the last year, it denies the audience Arthur actually being the Joker in the real world of the film until the end, when he unexpectedly dismisses his counsel (Catherine Keener) to take up his own defense and perform for the cameras once more in the suit and makeup. The only other times we see him in the makeup are in the fantasy sequences in which he sings.
Oh yeah, I forgot this is also a musical. Apparently, Phillips and Warners have forgotten it’s a musical too, as they’ve spent the last few months trying to hide this fact. But from the moment Arthur warbles “For Once in My Life” in Arkham, you’re in for a playlist of showtunes and pop standards cobbled together by hitting shuffle on Gaga’s Spotify, as there seems to be little forethought into why each song is chosen. If Phillips wanted to do a musical, it would have helped for him to study the structure of the genre. It would also have helped him to watch a few, both to learn how songs emerge organically from scenes, and how to film musical numbers in such a way that it doesn’t consistently undercut his performers’ ability to sell these songs.
A key example is Gaga’s rendition of “If My Friends Could See Me Now” from Sweet Charity, sung as she sets off a fire in Arkham and makes a run for the exit with Arthur, climbing up the gates as a crowd pulls up outside. The choice of song is appropriate, Gaga sings it with such aplomb that it makes me wish I could see her do a revival of Sweet Charity, and the staging of it, with the characters having reason to move, should make for an entertaining scene. But Phillips cannot bring himself to even have Gaga singing in the frame by herself. When she and Arthur climb the gates, he places them so far apart that he can barely get both in the shot, denying us any close-up of Gaga doing her thing. The rest of the musical numbers fare no better — they’re all lit with the same backlighting, often emulating flat imitations of better films, or, if not done in the fantasy world, accompanied by a lead-in where a character builds to an up-tempo song by singing the first verse slowly because realism, I guess. And Phoenix’s voice lacks the character to compensate for his thin vocal range.
Like the plot recaps, the musical numbers only exist to pad the run time so that Phillips, Phoenix, and company can hit “submit” on this hastily-thought-out assignment with a third-act that kicks off with deus ex machina explosion and climaxes with a scene assuring us that they are done with this franchise for good. Thank god, as it seems like none of them ever wanted to be there in the first place beyond the paycheck. But if this is my reaction, imagine what the “fans” will think. They’ll likely resemble Homer Simpson after he realizes Paint Your Wagon is a musical and not a bloody Lee Marvin shoot-em-up: “They’re singing, Marge! Why aren’t they killing each other?”
