Turns out the joke’s on us.
Five years after the massively successful albeit polarizing “Joker,” director/co-writer Todd Phillips and Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix reteam for “Joker: Folie à Deux.” As you’ve probably heard, it’s a kind of jukebox semi-musical, with Phoenix and Lady Gaga as the Harley Quinn precursor Lee Quinzel belting out covers of 20th century pop songs and Broadway musical standards as if they’re starring in a demented mashup of “Natural Born Killers” and “La La Land.”
One admires Phillips’ willingness to take such a big swing, to attempt something uniquely dark and forcefully unreal — and to be sure, a handful of insanely inspired sequences achieve that end. Ultimately, though, the sequel has very little new to say about Arthur Fleck and his place in this world, and the musical interludes start to feel like gratuitous self-indulgence rather than insightful and illuminating passages that advance or enhance the material.
Perhaps most disappointing: We’re still waiting for the Joker to become THE JOKER. The sequel gives us a central character of limited intelligence and a decidedly narrow worldview who isn’t so much terrifying as he is … dull.
With an overlong running time of 2 hours and 19 minutes, “Folie à Deux” is confined for the most part to two main venues. One is dank, horrific Arkham State Hospital, where the frighteningly emaciated Arthur has become so defeated that he can no longer even muster up a daily joke to amuse the sadistic guards.
The other is the courtroom where prosecutor Harvey Dent (Harry Lawley), who will one day have his own two-faced crisis, is seeking the death penalty for Arthur, while Arthur’s attorney (Catherine Keener), argues that it’s not Arthur who committed those murders, it’s his alter ego, Joker. We get only brief glimpses of the chaos permeating the beleaguered Gotham City, where the famous Joker is still regarded as a hero rebel, even more so after he was the subject of a made-for-TV movie.
The reality is that Arthur remains a sad and pathetic loner/loser who snapped and killed six people (nobody yet knows he murdered his mother), shuffling miserably about while awaiting his trial — but he comes alive when he meets Lee Quinzel, who has been incarcerated after setting her parents’ apartment building on fire. She’s obsessed with Arthur, like those terribly misguided women who write letters to imprisoned serial killers and sometimes wind up marrying them.
Lady Gaga is an electric presence and an extraordinary actor, and it is pure twisted magic when Lee locks eyes with Arthur and tells him that once they’re free, they’re going to build a mountain.
In the days leading up to the trial, Arthur and Lee fall madly in love, and director Phillips and his team present a series of creatively staged fantasy musical numbers, with Phoenix doing a serviceable job with limited vocal talent while Gaga’s voice soars to the heavens. In an inspired sequence with Arthur and Lee hosting a “Sonny & Cher”-type TV program, they cover the Bee Gees’ “To Love Somebody.” A fever dream sequence sees Arthur delivering a passionate rendition of
“The Joker” — not the Steve Miller hit, which might have been suitably bonkers, but the Leslie Bricusse/Anthony Newley song from the 1964 musical “The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd.”
So it goes, and so it goes. Arthur and/or Lee regale us with covers of 1960s and 1970s pop hits such as “(They Long to Be) Close to You” and “For Once in My Life,” as well as sometimes creaky and overplayed Broadway chestnuts including “If My Friends Could See Me Now,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and “That’s Entertainment.” Production designer Mark Friedberg creates some visually arresting sets, and the costumes by Arianne Phillips add bright colors to the drab real-life settings.
A few characters from “Joker” return for courtroom testimony, including Zazie Beetz as Arthur’s former neighbor Sophie, while a couple of new faces make impactful appearances, e.g. Brendan Gleeson as a cheerfully cruel prison guard and Steve Coogan as a sleazy TV reporter who interviews Arthur in prison.
We almost never see Lady Gaga’s Lee unless she’s in Arthur’s shadow, which feels like a missed opportunity, because she’s clearly far more intelligent, diabolical and potentially dangerous than the broken man she idolizes. Phoenix once again acts the hell out of this part, but he’s not really striking any new notes.
“Folie à Deux” spins its wheels in the final act before we’re hit with two big developments, one that feels arbitrary, the other that comes across as borderline insulting to the viewers and to the legacy of the Joker character. There’s always a joker, there’s always a clown — but if he doesn’t morph into something bigger and bolder and more terrible, it starts to feel like we’ve seen this show before, only without the musical numbers.