Joker: Folie à Deux

After the events of 2019's Joker, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is in prison and awaiting trial for his scandalous, blood-soaked past. With all eyes on the tragic clown, the unlikely celebrity finds new love in the form of Lee (Lady Gaga), a fellow inmate toxically obsessed with his Joker persona. Technicolor musical numbers support his incarcerated love story.

A disappointing sequel that doesn't add much to Todd Phillips's original. Many audiences arguably misinterpreted 2019's Joker, and some hold steadfast in the view that it glorifies the very violence that it condemns. But as a work of art, the Joaquin Phoenix-starred film worked as an effective psychological drama. The evolution of Arthur Fleck from a broken man and social outcast to the face of a blue-collar revolution was equally cinematic and realistic. Sadly, Joker: Folie à Deux lacks the original's bite and plays out as a tedious courtroom drama and an unconvincing love story. Appearing in the court of law with his clown makeup, a mellowed-down Arthur performs an encore of empathy-inducing monologues, the more impactful versions of which we already pondered upon in the first Joker.

An underused Lady Gaga and undercooked satire. As for Lady Gaga's turn as a gritty Harley Quinn (called Lee in this version), the singer/actress is heavily underused to sing or deliver juvenile lines like "You're Joker, you can do anything." Returning as director and co-writer, Todd Phillips is very much aware of how his first Joker film was misinterpreted by some radical elements of society. And so, there are traces of satire in his second outing, with hints of over-stylized true crime TV movies or Joker fanatics pleading for his innocence during the Ted Bundy-style trial. Sadly, these on-the-surface elements fail to add sparks to an otherwise uneventful storyline.

Joker: Folie à Deux is indeed a musical but a lackluster one. Many fans of the original had their reservations about the Joker sequel ever since it was announced to be a jukebox musical. Phillips refrains from calling Joker a musical when it is clearly one. But to the dismay of eye-rolling audiences, the musical numbers of Joker and Lee's slow-burning, jazzy routines sound monotonous and feel forcefully inserted to add some oomph factor to the film. Despite Phoenix and Lady Gaga's musical talents, the musical element is ultimately reduced to a gimmick for most of the film's runtime. It's a shame, given how the first Joker was synced to pitch-perfect needle drops like Frank Sinatra's That's Life or Cream's White Room.

Music could have been the highlight of this sequel, but Joker: Folie à Deux doesn't strike a chord. Icelandic maestro Hildur Guðnadóttir returns with her Oscar-winning score in Joker: Folie à Deux to save the yawning viewer from monotony. Still, there's only so much "Bathroom Dance" that one can handle. The same violin notes of that hauntingly beautiful composition are played to the point of saturation, perhaps signaling a cry of defeat for the film's troubled antihero and the franchise itself.