“Joker: Folie à Deux” is such a dour, unpleasant slog that it is hard to know why it was made or for whom. That’s admittedly nonsensical — it’s for us! — though no more ridiculous than anything in this sequel to “Joker” (2019). Directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix as the sad, mad clown of the title, that first movie was a success, both critically and commercially. The intensity of Phoenix’s performance, with its smoldering violence and unpredictability, drew you in, and the gestures at American violence and nihilism kept you wondering. The movie seemed to have something serious to say, which was finally its big joke.
The original “Joker” won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, and grossed more than a billion worldwide. It was also nominated for 11 Oscars (including best picture), which is only notable because that’s nearly three times the total number of nods that Martin Scorsese received for “Taxi Driver” and “The King of Comedy,” two of Phillips’s obvious touchstones. So, all things considered, and with oodles of money in the offing, a sequel was inevitable even if Phoenix’s sour frown, the movie’s barely-there story, its unrelenting grimness and its commitment to forced eccentricity suggest that no one involved was really stoked to make it.
The big non-news about “Folie à Deux” is that it’s a half-baked, halfhearted musical complete with one star who can sing, Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel a.k.a. Harley Quinn, and another (Phoenix) who can’t or won’t. Gaga and Phoenix perform assorted song-and-sometimes-dance numbers featuring classics from the Great American Songbook that are mixed in with some traditional tunes and recent songs. Anytime that Gaga sings, the movie holds you, and it’s amusing to see Phoenix getting his Gene Kelly on with some tap-tap-tapping. The numbers are distributed throughout the movie, which otherwise largely toggles between scenes of Joker — and his sad-sack civilian alter-ego, Arthur Fleck — locked in a mental institution and of him in a Gotham court, standing trial on multiple counts of murder.
Written by Phillips and Scott Silver, the sequel tracks Fleck/Joker in and out of the institution where the guards (played by Brendan Gleeson, among others) are predictably barbaric and routinely mete out the usual cruel punishment. At some point, Fleck meets Lee/Harley, who’s in an adjacent ward. It’s love or insanity or something at first sight, unconvincingly, and soon they’re swapping kisses, trading weird smiles, performing duets and planning mayhem like crazy kids do in storybook romances. Despite the two leads’ obvious attractions, they never make sense as a couple in large measure because the movie itself never coheres.
There are appealing moments here and there, including one scene built around courtroom testimony by Gary Puddles (Leigh Gill), a colleague from Fleck’s days as a clown-for hire. In the first movie, Puddles witnesses Fleck (or Joker) stab another colleague to death (that’s entertainment!), and now he has been called to recount the gory mess. Gill makes both his character’s tremulous fear and anguish palpable; it’s a rare moment of feeling in the movie, one that Phillips almost instantly undermines by inserting a shot showing that Puddles, who’s of short stature, is seated on a telephone book. Whether Phillips was daring — or baiting — moviegoers to laugh at this image, the cutaway only undermines the actor’s performance.
Phillips has crammed “Folie à Deux” with cinematic allusions that may express his influences or just suggest that he spent a great deal of time during the pandemic glued to Turner Classic Movies. Whatever the case, there are references scattered throughout like breadcrumbs to films like Chaplin’s “Modern Times” (also cited in the first movie) and characters like Pepé Le Pew, and the judge (Bill Smitrovich) presiding over Fleck’s trial bears more than a passing resemblance to Scorsese. In one scene, Harley and Fleck or Joker, whatever, watch a bit from “The Band Wagon,” the 1953 Vincente Minnelli musical with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse starring as performers working alongside a “genius director” to put on a new show.
Like the sequel’s French subtitle (once a clinical term for a rare shared psychosis), this nod at a pompous auteur seems like a sly, self-reflexive, almost self-mocking gesture from Phillips, though it can also be read as defensive, as if he were steeling himself for criticism. Like the first “Joker,” the sequel showily bristles with ambition, from Phoenix’s Method-y madness — he’s slimmed down so much that his bones look like they might pierce his skin — to the ominous tones of Hildur Gudnadottir’s score. Yet while Phillips and Phoenix seemed equally committed to engaging the audience in the first movie, in “Folie à Deux” they largely seem more invested in denying it a modicum of pleasure, a triumph that they share in equally.
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