‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ is more like ‘Folly à Dud’
It’s hard to conceive that Todd Phillips once made bro comedies like Old School and the Hangover movies, in which male goofballs endure a parade of embarrassing follies. Phillips’ farcical touch shifted to a much darker tone when he cast Joaquin Phoenix in 2019’s Joker, and its follow-up, Joker: Folie à Deux, tries to add a little sunshine to the unrelenting grimness of the character’s inner and outer life.
It’s worth noting that Phillips didn’t think Joker needed a follow-up. It was reportedly Phoenix who felt his character had more to give, and after having a “vision” of the Joker singing and dancing on a nightclub stage, a script was cobbled together. Adding Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn seemed like an inspired touch, at least judging from ubiquitous trailers for the sequel.
In Joker: Folie à Deux, crazy is a cocktail made for two, specifically Phoenix as Arthur Fleck/Joker and Gaga as Harleen “Lee” Quinzell/Harley Quinn. They meet at Arkham Asylum, which is a hellish place of sadistic guards and a Payne’s Grey color palette. Defense attorney Catherine Keener is trying to get Fleck judged competent for trial for all the homicides he committed in the first movie; instead, he meets up with Lee in a prison choir class and she confides her allegiance to him. She wants to build mountains; he just wants to share breathing space with someone who “gets” him.
Phillips deserves a bit of credit for trying something different here that was guaranteed to polarize not only DC Comics fans but general audiences alike: he crafts a courtroom drama interspersed with musical numbers set on glitzy/sleazy nightclub stages where Joker and Harley duet their hearts out, providing a sort of Greek chorus commentary to the plotline. It’s an imaginary musical based on their folie à deux, or “delusion shared by two.”
But judging from the confused, bummed-out expressions of many patrons leaving our screening, the experiment mostly fails. It doesn’t help that the film is a miserable slog-fest, peppered with musical razzle-dazzle, which is necessary because the plot basically involves Joker shuttling between Arkham and a courtroom where he (inexplicably) is allowed to smoke constantly. The razzle-dazzle bit can’t help but compare (unfavorably) to earlier, more polished drama-musical hybrids like Chicago and La La Land. Phillips has said he didn’t want to focus on how these two crazy kids built Gotham’s “Clown Prince of Crime” empire, but instead focus internally on their dreams and shared madness.
And what madness it is. Their belted-out fantasies range from gospel numbers to Nancy and Frank Sinatra croons to Phoenix capably tap-dancing to a homicidal Sonny and Cher parody (older kids will recall the singing duo trading deadpanned marital insults as patter between songs—yes, on TV).
There’s something here about the inner fantasies of Joker-Harley acting out an arc of a typical love story—after joy and romantic ardor, there’s suspicion and doubt, all reflected in song. Is Fleck who he says he is? Does Harley love him for who he is, or for his transgressive alter-ego?
Buried in this songbook soufflé is some commentary on media and its effects on fans and fanatics, if you look hard enough. The crazy crowds of Joker fans outside the courtroom and the general air of lawlessness in Gotham might recall the Jan. 6, 2021 US Capitol attack by rabid MAGA fans, and Joker’s laissez-faire attitude towards chaos and infectious madness might point to a certain US candidate’s disregard for the truth.
But maybe that’s reductive, as Phillips is now an auteur of sorts and Joker: Folie à Deux presumably aims for deeper layers of meaning than, say, Hangover III. But as a film, it’s just too long, often grim and dour (the Arkham beatings go on forever) and doesn’t seem to advance Joker’s story very far.
One wishes the director had gone full La La Land or Chicago, and woven a more interesting story into the (admittedly cool-looking) musical numbers. But that would be a different movie. Instead, Phillips repeats a message about mayhem and the virality of bad ideas that drove the earlier Joker. Phoenix’s take on Fleck is heart-wrenching, from his ugly laugh-crying to his repeated prison stompings, to his general retreat into his own inward-leaning body; only when he is Joker does his body take flight. And even then, his ideas can only be unleashed because he is pretending to be something else. Even worse, Joker: Folie à Deux leaves us with the uncomfortable conclusion that the germ of madness can be contagious.
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Joker: Folie à Deux is now showing. Released by Warner Bros. Pictures.