Joker: Folie a Deux (2024) Review: Folie a Poo

2019’s The Joker made bold moves, portraying the quintessential Batman villain in a completely different light. Director Todd Phillips helmed a powerful story of loneliness and abandonment framed through the eyes of a mentally ill, barely-getting-by loner. Now, 5 years from that film’s release, comes Joker: Folie a Duex, which amazingly takes all of those great ideas from the first film, throws them in a dumpster and lights it on fire.

Joker: Folie a Duex opens on an animated recap/dive into the assumedly current state of mind of the titular Joker, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix). When the film switches to the real story, Fleck is shown imprisoned at Arkham Asylum for his crimes. Gone is the persona that lit Gotham ablaze in the previous film, replaced instead by a meek, medicine-infused abider of the rules who spends his days being teased by Arkham’s guards (including a terrific Brendan Gleeson). Phoenix is able to drop right back into the broken mind of Fleck with ease, something the actor is well renowned for. Here, he delivers a much-needed focal point for the slow first act of the film.

As Fleck prepares with his legal counsel for his upcoming trial, he catches the attention of Harleen Quinzel, played by the illustrious Lady Gaga. It cannot be denied that the two have immense chemistry on screen together. From the first gaze, I felt it. I have continually been impressed with the acting skills of Gaga, who first wowed me in A Star is Born. Here, she’s able to capture a sort of manic, psychotic, manipulator who sees Arthur not as a man reforming his life, but as a myth that the wants to attach herself to. Quinzel uses Fleck’s vulnerability to her advantage, pushing her image of their dream onto him through lies and manipulation.

And it almost works. But that’s where ultimately Joker: Folie a Duex comes crashing down. It feels like it takes far too long to go anywhere. When things seem to finally be picking up after an hour of shuffling back and forth in Arkham, Phillips and company make the boldly awful choice to switch gears back to zero. About two thirds of the way through, the film reverts back to what feels like the beginning. Arthur is still in prison and not much happens from there on. Rinse and repeat for the final act, which had a ton of promise post-courtroom scenes.

Phoenix makes the performance mostly passable to watch as he is often wont to do. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that, aside from some fun courtroom scenes where everyone really gets to act, nothing really happens in this movie. It doesn’t stand on its own two feet. Phillips wanted to create a film made “by crazy people”. They succeeded on that front. Unfortunately, it’s also unwatchable.

All this too and I haven’t even mentioned the most egregious sin of the whole film. It’s a musical! While this in itself isn’t a bad idea, it becomes amplified because it’s so obvious that they do not want it to be a musical. Joker: Folie a Duex is a musical that is afraid of the fact that it is a musical. The numbers are mostly bad, save for one at the beginning of the third act. They interrupt any flow or atmosphere developed to an almost laughable level. Pitch corrected vocals, especially from Phoenix, are incredibly distracting.

Warner Bros. did not market is as a musical either. So inevitably, someone went to the theater hoping to see a new Joker film in the vein of the first one and burst out laughing at the first breakout into song.

I get what Phillips and the rest of the crew were trying to do. It is an interesting concept to make a movie that feels like it was made by – or at least viewed from – a mad man. But that seems to be a better concept than it is in practice.

But credit where credit is due, the film does look incredible. The production design for Arkham Asylum is really great. There are some wonderful shots throughout the film by cinematographer Lawrence Sher. He does a good job of getting into Arthur’s mind much more than the story does.

Final Thoughts

Joker: Folie a Duex is a mess. There’s very little redeeming qualities in it. If it wasn’t so boring then the concepts may have worked. But then again, the awful ending would have thrown away all promise the film had anyways. The film feels more like a middle finger to fans of the first than anything else. Bold move Warner Brothers.

1.5/5

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Aaryn Souza
Aaryn Souza
I have been watching movies my whole life and fell in love at an early age. I was entranced by the ability for a film to whisk me away to a different universe, and that really started with the Star Wars Franchise. I'm by no means an expert and can roll with opinions that might be controversial, but that's the beauty of a film; we can all see the same thing on screen, but each of us may come away with a different interpretation of what we saw. When I'm not watching movies, I work in Marketing with my degree from Western New England University. See my Letterboxd: ‎asouza16’s profile • Letterboxd MY FAVORITE MOVIES: Good Will Hunting, Star Wars: A New Hope (or the whole saga), La La Land, Before Sunrise, Ocean's 11, and so many more...
2019's The Joker made bold moves, portraying the quintessential Batman villain in a completely different light. Director Todd Phillips helmed a powerful story of loneliness and abandonment framed through the eyes of a mentally ill, barely-getting-by loner. Now, 5 years from that film's release, comes Joker:...Joker: Folie a Deux (2024) Review: Folie a Poo