Joker: Folie à Deux Pales in Comparison to 2019’s Joker

Along with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Joker: Folie à Deux was one of my absolute most anticipated films of the year. I’m a huge fan of 2019’s Joker, so when I found out that a sequel was in the works, I was over the moon. In particular, I was really excited because lead star Joaquin Phoenix has traditionally been a “one-and-done” kind of actor. He had never made a sequel before this one, so I figured the movie had to be really special to get this guy to come back as the titular villain.

Joker: Folie à Deux was directed and co-written by Todd Phillips, and it stars the aforementioned Joaquin Phoenix along with Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, and Harry Lawtey. In the film, Arthur Fleck is being detained at Arkham Asylum, and he’s on trial for murdering multiple people, including one on live TV.

While there, he meets a fellow inmate named Lee Quinzel (this universe’s version of Harley Quinn), and they instantly fall in love. Their whirlwind romance softens the villainous Fleck and makes him want to be a better person, but just like in the first movie, he simply can’t do it. The mistreatment he receives from almost everybody around him eventually becomes too much to bear, and he decides to don the facepaint once again and revert to his villainous alter ego, the Joker.

I’m not going to bury the lead. Despite that intriguing premise, Joker: Folie à Deux is one of the most disappointing sequels I’ve seen in a long time. It’s not necessarily one of the worst (although it is pretty bad), but coming on the heels of one of the greatest comic book films of all time, the gap between my anticipation and the finished product ended up being astronomical.

For starters, Joker: Folie à Deux is an unabashed thematic retread of the first Joker. That original movie was a brilliant exploration of how society often lets down the people who need our help the most, and it made you genuinely sympathize with the man who would eventually go on to become Gotham’s clown prince of crime.

This film tries to double down on that idea, so as I said in my plot synopsis, just about everyone in Arthur’s life treats him like dirt. The guards at Arkham mock and abuse him, his lawyer acts like he’s a little kid who needs adult supervision, and he learns that his late mother didn’t love him quite as much as he thought she did.

At one point in the story, Fleck even begins to doubt Lee’s feelings for him, and while that might make for an intriguing movie on its own, as a sequel to Joker it just falls flat. It’s clear that the filmmakers said everything they wanted to say the first time around, so on a thematic level, Joker: Folie à Deux pretty much personifies the phrase “been there, done that.”

And on a narrative level, it doesn’t fare much better. I mentioned before that Fleck eventually turns into the Joker again, but it’s not in the way you might think. He’s a very tame Joker, so even though he looks the part, he never truly becomes the violently deranged criminal who shocked the world in 2019.

In fact, I spent nearly the entirety of Joker: Folie à Deux waiting for this story to go somewhere, but up until the final few minutes, the whole film is just Arthur’s trial and his budding relationship with Lee. It’s maddeningly lifeless and stagnant, and to make matters worse, it ends on just about the most frustrating note possible.

I’m obviously not going to tell you what happens, but I will say that the final scene is going to be very divisive. If you read the first movie a certain way, I suspect you’ll love this finale, but to me, it feels like a big middle finger from the filmmakers. It even manages to retroactively ruin some of the fun of the original Joker (unless, like me, you choose to ignore it in your headcanon), so it totally killed any lingering positive feelings I may have had about this film.

Last but not least, I want to say a few words about the music in Joker: Folie à Deux. As I’m sure many of you know, this movie is somewhat of a musical, with Arthur and Lee getting a number of song and dance numbers. Sometimes they’re all in Arthur’s head, and other times the characters really are singing (but presumably imagining the instrumental accompaniment), but wherever these scenes took place, I quite liked them.

Granted, it’s not the kind of music I normally listen to, but for a one-time watch, it’s pretty good. Lady Gaga (as Lee) completely knocks it out of the park every single time, and Joaquin Phoenix’s voice is surprisingly perfect for Arthur. He sounds like a normal guy rather than a professional singer, but he’s still good enough that you can enjoy his songs.

Unfortunately, though, those fun musical numbers are little more than window dressing, so they don’t fundamentally change the quality of the film. Joker: Folie à Deux is still a disappointingly flat rehash of the themes that made the first Joker so great, so unless you’re a huge fan of the original movie and you just need to see this one, I suggest giving it a pass.

Joker: Folie à Deux is playing in theaters right now.