Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) Review

"I don't wanna sing anymore."

-Arthur Fleck

After the events of the previous film, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) sits in Arkham State Hospital awaiting to see if he will be declared competent to stand trial.  He meets another inmate, Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), a superfan of Joker, who brings music back into Arthur's life.

What Works:

My favorite part of the movie is the opening sequence.  It's an animated Looney Tunes-esque sequence with Joker fighting his own shadow.  It's the most creative and fun this movie ever gets and I wish the rest of the movie carried some of this energy.

There's also some decent acting in the movie.  Phoenix and Gaga have great chemistry and there is some spark in their scenes together.  They just don't share enough screen-time.  Leigh Gill is also great in his brief appearance.  You can't help but feel awful for his character.  Gill absolutely nails it.

What Sucks:

I don't hate this movie for the same reasons it seems like most people do.  I know some people say its a character assassination of Arthur from the first movie.  I know this movie was supposed to take the character that people idolize and show them why they shouldn't.  Arthur sucks.  He's no one to look up to.  All of that is fine.  If that's the story the filmmakers wanted to tell, fine.  Go for it.  The problem is, while they succeeded in showing us that Arthur sucks, they forgot to make an interesting or entertaining film along the way.

The biggest problem here is that I was mostly bored during this film.  There just wasn't much to capture my interest.  It's a lot of Arthur moping around prison or going to court.  It got better when Arthur and Leigh had scenes where they actually get to interact, but that wasn't nearly often enough.  There just wasn't any reason for me to care about anything going on in the film.  It was miserable and boring.

Making this a musical is an interesting idea, but they didn't go far enough with it.  It has some of the least visually interesting musical numbers I've ever seen.  Having one or two solo numbers is fine, but their needed to be a couple of showstoppers along the way.  Go all out!  Lean into it!  Have the prison guards and the inmates singing and dancing alongside Arthur.  There was fun to be had here.  If we're not going to do that, cut the musical numbers.  And all the scenes of Arthur lighting a cigarette while we're at it.  If the movie is going to be bad and boring, at least make it short.

I think the most damning criticism I can give any movie is if I spend the entire runtime thinking of simple ways to make the movie better.  That was the case here.  I was so irritated with Joker 2 because there were so many ways to make this more interesting and entertaining while still getting the point across.  Arthur sucks and no one should look up to him.  Great.  Let's sing and dance our way there and have some fun and interesting story beats along the way.  In the end, Arthur can learn something about himself or try to be Joker and fail.  There were ways to make this movie work and the filmmakers took a wrong turn nearly every step of the way.

Verdict:

A friend of mine called this move Joker: Folie à Doo Doo.  I find that accurate.  I like the animation sequence to open the film and Phoenix, Gaga, and Gill do a good job, but the movie is boring and miserable when it didn't need to be.  It had some interesting ideas and did nothing with them.  Why so serious?

 2/10: Awful