Possibly one of the most anticipated movies of the year, the “Joker” sequel that was released on Friday is already garnering disappointment from movie lovers and critics.
The film by Todd Phillips, “Joker: Folie à Deux” — French for “madness for two” — stars Joaquin Phoenix, returning to the role of Arthur Fleck, a.k.a. the Joker, and introduces singer-songwriter Lady Gaga as the Joker’s love interest, Lee Quinzel, a.k.a. Harley Quinn.
Also starring in the film are Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Zazie Beetz and Steve Coogan.
Despite Philips’ 2019 “Joker” grossing more than a billion dollars and getting 11 Oscar nominations — the highest number at the 2020 Academy Awards — the sequel failed to get a similar positive reaction with a 34 per cent Rotten Tomatoes rating from more than 200 reviews as of this writing.
The audience score is currently sitting at 36 per cent.
Film critic Peter Howell, writing in the Star, gave “Folie à Deux” two stars out of four and said that while the first film had “something to say to the world,” this one “seems to be muttering and warbling incoherently to itself.”
In the 2019 film, Fleck became the Joker after he donned the killer-clown disguise to express his anger at being shunned by society and kicked to the curb by Gotham City, which cut funding for the medication and counselling he needed to control his outbursts, Howell wrote in an opinion piece.
While both films see Fleck struggling with his identity, the sequel brings a new spin: it’s partially a musical.
“Packed into the film’s wearisome 138-minute running time is a jukebox musical, a courtroom procedural, a soapy love story, a disorienting identity quest, a violent cultural commentary and a Looney Tunes-inspired cartoon,” Howell wrote. “The last, represented by a short segment that opens the film, reprises the violence of ‘Joker’ and is by Oscar-nominated animator Sylvain Chomet (‘The Triplets of Belleville’).”
Other movie critics have posted their own lukewarm reviews of the film. Here’s what they’re saying:
“Meh,” Mike Carolla said in a post on X, attaching a gif of an unimpressed Bart and Lisa Simpson.
In Carolla’s Letterboxd two-star review, the film is described as “a pretty mess” with elements of “entertainment value” that get overlooked due to being “wrapped up in a package that leaves you more frustrated than satisfied.”
Carolla also said Harley Quinn is “a pretty weakly written character” despite Gaga’s “committed performance.”
“The ending is going to piss a lot of people off and I honestly can’t blame them,” Carolla said.
Rachel Leishman, writing for website The Mary Sue, said the movie “said nothing” in its full duration and left her feeling “hollow by the end.”
“The hollow feeling Joker: Folie à Deux gave me was coupled with dread over the future of cinema if this is what we’re investing money in,” Leishman said.
Justine Peres Smith, writing for Cult MTL, said the movie “could not be more of a failure,” adding that it’s “painfully dull.”
“The film feels so plainly contemptuous of its audience that it’s as if the filmmakers forgot they had to make a movie.”
Siddhant Adlakha said in a review at IGN.com that rather than a “dreamy jukebox musical,” the sequel is “more of a courtroom drama, and not a very interesting one at that.”
In his review for The Ringer, Adam Nayman called the movie a “strange, fascinating, and seemingly willful (sic) total failure.”
“In a strange twist that seemingly has less to do with clever screenwriting than with wayward filmmaking, Folie à Deux’s best scene is its last one — not because its morbid punch line is effective, but because it conveys a palpable feeling of relief that the movie and the Joker-verse are over. Usually, when a movie peaks in the final moments, it’s a sign that it works, whereas here it plays like an admission — whether tacit or accidental or something in between — that the whole thing was a mistake,” Nayman wrote.
