Joker: Folie à Deux - ⭐️⭐️/⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A couple of years in-universe since Arthur Fleck fulfilled his bleak purpose forced upon him in Joker, Todd Philips’ latest sequel, Folie à Deux, returns to the scene of Arthur’s crimes in a state of doubly raised delusions, detouring musical sequences as coping mechanisms, and subversive romantic manipulations in his iteration of arguably DC Comics’ most infamous pairing with Lady Gaga’s turn at the bat, or mallet, as Harley Quinn. In a legal trial for Arthur’s freedom with suspicious motivations at every turn, how well does Folie à Deux’s even artsier psychosis redefine, or break, Philips’ titular protagonist?
Boy, do we have problems up here. Yikes! There’s no shelter on Earth stable enough to hide from the hydrogen bomb wad of narrative-destroying daftness that Folie à Deux’s ending drops on us. Philips’ guileless decision to end his sequel the way he did, stomped on my goodwill towards any of the somewhat compelling, minor-league threads that had been floating around in the movie somewhere, into dust-biting dismay. If that’s someone’s idea of clever or relevantly tricksy “fan service” then the flat note of unearned finality he chose is a muck-filled dispenser of “fan lecturing” instead. Yes, I know it’s not exactly as executed, but Todd knew what he was doing, and got too cocky.
An ending that is a beastly pisstake at the expense of the audience’s investment is not a matter of not “giving us what we want.” Rather, it stops making any reasonable thematic sense whatsoever! Hooking up the unconfident, meandering story to such an unrelated continuity glitch for a “what a twist!” moment, neither compensates for the long-haul conning of Folie à Deux’s cutting of its losses before it can introduce them, nor rewards us with an unexpected thrill in its sudden downturn. You’ll know when you see it - a prematurely perceived, smug mic drop that is just like watching someone electrocute themselves.
It’s always excitement abound for me whenever a new movie’s production influences include those from films that I strongly feel are overlooked gems, so you can imagine my buzz around Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘One from the Heart’ being listed as a production design blueprint for Folie à Deux. The potential for bursting colours of artificial constructions in what was set to be a psychotic musical I’ve wanted to see my whole life was immense! Did this deliver any of that, visually at least? Oh God no! One dream sequence cut from that cloth for a minute or so, and Folie à Deux embraces nothing it touches in every other area as well. My buzz was well and truly killed.
It is impressive how little substantive vantage there is to gain from most of the elements in erratic rotation here. If you thought Megalopolis was disjointed, Folie à Deux somehow tops it by having no compatible joints to fit together, though when separated from each other, the plot points could have been powerful enough in a complete retooling of the movie and all it stands for. The worst thing is the elements themselves aren’t all that bad! They only appear that way and don’t come together accordingly because of Philips’ flippant attitude when writing his sequel (and you’d think he was scrounging for an adequate execution like a thirsty man in a desert).
I’m sympathetic to Folie à Deux forcing Philips into a Matrix Resurrections situation, and I should have every respect for him following in the footsteps of M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Glass’, I just hate to say that despite what’s sordidly superfluous yet engaging to me throughout those first two acts, this is a fundamentally broken story aggravatingly undone not only by the ending, but by Philips’ heart not being in it actively sabotaging the story. What was sympathetic becomes a deliberate slight against us for wanting to engage with the potential in the first place. I gave this film as fair a shake as I could, having no set expectation it had to meet; I’m not a Joker diehard who is upset at this antithetical takedown. Folie à Deux’s just not very good overall.
A Joker sequel swinging for a Doctor Who Season 23: ‘Trial of a Timelord’ angle on a comic book movie courtroom drama (if Colin Baker’s Sixth Doctor never outgrew his post-regeneration violent phase) wasn’t on the cards in my mind, yet I’m stoked Philips went there. So, while I approved of the intention, it felt too laboured, directionless, and procedural to keep my attention. What the script aims for in the outskirts of 12 Angry Men’s realm gets stuck in the wheel of a few moderately addled caricatures in a thudding, twisted masquerade lampooning the very empathy it’s showing us as a deflated construct. That’s the killing crux of Folie à Deux. Every introduced facet of premise, theme, aesthetic, arc, and execution enters with a bang, before a split-second fizzling out which doesn’t care the more wretchedly miserable the experience becomes.
Make no mistake, Folie à Deux is wretchedly miserable on purpose to prove a point, however when you flagrantly divest a character so that there is nothing for us to take away by the end, how gripping or captivating is cruelty for cruelty’s sake to really watch when it’s all but abandoned the very reason to follow Arthur Fleck as a character, or who he was concretely established as to begin with? Joker’s cautionary tale wasn’t condonable in action yet locked into empathising with desperate motivation in a degrading societal context, and now Folie à Deux turns that on its head to ask us whether we’re supposed to care for Arthur Fleck at all.
It hits the gavel on a resounding no while beating the hell from him like there’s no nuance as to whether he deserves it or not, and it’s hard to ignore the impression that Philips almost wants the audience to partake in the same abuse and berating of his ugly and detestable world onscreen. To think that Batman is one day going to want to save this version of Gotham? Just lay waste to it like what should have happened to the town in Chicken Little at this rate!
The execution is so inundated with problems that it’s difficult to tell if Philips had a concise emotional goal, if what I observed even had those remorseless connotations to it. Joker and Harley’s honeymooner romance and their obsessions over what the other person means in their eyes to salvaging their worldviews works as a darkly alluring narrative catalyst on its own. Meanwhile, flipping the roles of their abusive relationship dynamic around, just for it to have no connection to the outcomes of the story after building Harley up as a maybe-mastermind, cancels out the interesting basis of what their romance started off with. Philips could have done, I don’t know… something, anything to use this opportunity to hit home what we’ve noted about Joker and Harley’s relationship for years when he opted to deconstruct villainous identities as this is determined to do without damage limitation or redrafted forethought.
The thing is, Folie à Deux has what could have been an incredible story that’s nestled away in shame in here. The measure of a man’s worth based on the idea of him in the court of public opinion, inverse to who he is without the social prestige, as revealed long into the movie that this was another point all along with Arthur pretending to be more than an ordinary man. Folie à Deux was close to bringing Joker full circle in a harsher, highly sensitive, reiterative form still dangling from the banister of unrefined empathy. But no. A hateful fumble to stick it to the audience who were on your side, wanting something different and thematically reflexive done well! The bag was thrown in the river.
Mirthless in its scarpering to unmitigated punishment over genuine advocacy, Folie à Deux has left such a bad taste in my mouth over the past few days, that it has curdled what little I appreciated about it into an unexplainable elusiveness where most of these story seeds get on my nerves the more I pick them apart.
Exhausting and insufferable to analyse. So densely packed with grave mistakes and fleeting highlights bouncing off each other so fast it makes my head spin as to what Philips’ deal was. The musical tangents aren’t a useful narrative device to reinvent and layer Joker and Harley beyond the surface level, nor are the song selections themselves bearing a wow factor, barring one (had the energy of the ‘Gonna Build a Mountain’ scene had translated to the rest of the movie, I would have enjoyed it a heck of a lot better!). Lady Gaga utilised so little overall that Harley’s role is unimportant, and the daydreamy set pieces are so minimally incorporated that there’s no imagination to the spiteful, diva-ish flair.
The system wins, no one gives a damn, ideology makes fallen soldiers of us all and replaces us. These should work as a whole message within another filmmaker’s emotionalist capabilities, but as it is: droopy, dreary, and sadistic, Folie à Deux regresses and depresses deliriously and unpleasantly. Not, might I add, for what should be gut-punching, boldly controversial storytelling with a heart fighting against the darkness I would flock to praise. The overcurrent of crippling sadness of this film is so dissonant from the director’s actions it’s honestly incalculable to figure out why we got this. If cinema is a machine for empathy, then this grinds it up, clogs it, and feeds what escapes it to the dogs. The “shared madness” aspect is so badly, passively conceived; to call the Joker sequel a folly would be too kind to how much of a burnt-out wreck it is. The feeling is mutual in writing about it.
Does Todd Philips like or hate Arthur Fleck as a character? The fact that this is an ongoing debate in its divisiveness says it all. He revives a sickly trope in the third act I was sure we had all moved on from as writers, to nail in the coffin his unfocused animosity towards the meta predicaments of his own creation, and though stunningly choreographed with laser sharp cinematography bathed in an old-timey limelight, a 2024 film hasn’t gotten under my skin this way since Sam Taylor-Johnson’s ‘Back To Black’.
Yes, Arthur Fleck, not the Joker, is who the story is about. That’s what I was looking for, and what we’ve received is a gotcha! which fails the character entirely. A comic book film of this independent artistic license should be encouraged, but not at the expense of empathetic integrity for such a troubling statement on male wellbeing in society.
Intellectually dishonest to the core. Did we learn nothing about deconstructionism from the Star Wars sequel trilogy? Just listen to Lady Gaga’s Harlequin album instead.
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