
Todd Phillips desperately needs your respect. The filmmaker best known for the Hangover trilogy has since abandoned comedy (citing “woke culture” as his reasoning) and thought himself a visionary for 2019’s Joker, a film I found to be riddled with pastiche: an exhausting, empty plea for cinematic importance. My biggest gripe with Joker is that, despite all its vague political imagery and stiff, exhausting writing, it says and means absolutely nothing. Joker was, at best, a false attempt at social commentary through the guise of a twisted spin on comic book lore. At worst, it was a self-important, thematically empty, nearly deluded plea for attention and respect. In this sequel, Phillips’ desperation could not be more clear. In the abundance of musical dream sequences and colorful set pieces and dramatic monologues, he wants to be seen as a good director, a serious director; he wants people to believe that all of this means something. But underneath all this so-called flair, Joker: Folie à Deux is a hollow, pathetic attempt at a film; it commits the cardinal sin of any attempted political movie in that, despite its mentions of violence and mental illness, it still has absolutely nothing interesting to say. Despite the hopes I had for its musicality and theatrics, as well as the star power of one Lady Gaga, Joker: Folie à Deux is just as bland, empty, and exhausting as the first.
Like its predecessor, Folie à Deux is burned first by its lazy screenplay. It so desperately wants to be taken seriously that every social or political statement that is pumped into it must be made abundantly clear. However, the closest political issue it seems to want to criticize is the treatment of mental illness, typically presented through the abstract concept of “being misunderstood” with a flimsy throughline of class. Yet the closest the film can get to genuine critique in this vein is that of media elitism, one that the first film already touched on (in, again, a thin and empty way). Even so, it can’t decide whether its anti-hero, Arthur Fleck, is sympathetic or dangerous, laughable or tragic. The characterization isn’t even strong enough to place him as “morally gray,” because the film itself cannot decide on its own morals.

We reunite with Arthur in Arkham Asylum, as he awaits trial for the murders he committed in the first film, particularly that of talk show host Murray Franklin on live television. The guards spare him cigarettes every time he tells a joke; his lawyer (Catherine Keener) prepares to make the case that the Joker is a split personality caused by abuse and trauma in his childhood; and he quickly falls in love with Harleen “Lee” Quinzel (Lady Gaga), a fellow patient. He faces mockery and brutality on a number of occasions, but finds an undying devotion towards Lee, explored primarily through many colorful and theatrical musical sequences. Despite being entertaining at times, the musical numbers frequently get oversaturated by the whiny, tactless screenplay that must assert its muddled sense of commentary in any stylistic sequence.
I never found Joaquin Phoenix’s performance in the first film particularly fascinating, much less worthy of an Oscar, and I feel the same way with Folie à Deux. Phoenix delves fully into the emotion and theatrics of the performance, not to mention the physical transformation, but in such a specific character study the role can only be as interesting as the film itself. Phoenix’s physicality in the musical sequences is impressive, and he does a pretty convincing job in such an unconvincing film, but it is just not enough to save a picture so thin. Gaga’s performance suffers a similar fate, because despite her undeniable allure and the way her gaze always enamors on screen (and onstage), the version of Harley Quinn that she is given is so barren and hollow that it is impossible to soak up any kind of substance or power from it. Similarly, the film indulges in a lot of lavish set pieces and costuming that could make for a fun aesthetic if there was any substance in the film to buoy it. Still, Folie à Deux is worth some praise for how it isn’t embarrassed to be a musical, and Phoenix and Gaga rise up to the challenge here. Still, the movie-musical flair seems like a poor attempt at giving individuality to a film that is uninteresting to begin with. Like Phoenix and Gaga’s performances, an amoral and hollow film cannot be made interesting with a few entertaining and stylish sequences.

Todd Phillips’ direction, for whatever technical skill he may possess, simply has no real vision. The moments of intrigue or aesthetic beauty are few and far between, because it’s impossible to look past the notion that it serves no thematic purpose, and that there is no thematic purpose driving the events of the film. The film’s thin, sloppy attempted commentary on the glorification of violence and neglect towards mental illness over sensationalizes these genuine political issues and provides no interesting critique, just a haphazard hope that we will sympathize with Fleck. However there is an issue with this plea for sympathy in itself, because as the film promotes this “reimagined villain” with a new backstory, it at times invites us to sympathize with him, or laugh at him, or indulge in his theatrical fantasies. Folie À Deux doesn’t know its protagonist, its message, or anything it hopes the audience may take away from the film.
===SPOILERS BELOW===
A bleak ending does not make a film meaningful or interesting solely because it is bleak. A tragic ending is not enough to compensate for a flashy yet thematically empty film. Phillips hopes to cement his flimsy thesis on Fleck’s sudden murder, to drive home this sense of sympathy for the character, or perhaps a brutal disregard for an unforgiving world. Folie à Deux follows the same trajectory as the first film, where Arthur Fleck is isolated, enamored in a romance that later leaves him in some form, enraptured in fantasy, and subsequently ends the tale even more alone than he began. It gives us nothing new about the character it so desperately wants to make interesting. Every attempted plot twist and so-called stylistic choice demonstrates a desire for the film to be taken seriously as some political drama mixed with a dark character study, but it’s plagued so badly by an identity crisis for the character of the Joker, and the film’s pathos as a whole, so that all of it amounts to nothing. Much like the first film, which was bogged down by pastiche rather than style, the issue is once again that Todd Phillips has absolutely nothing to say.
Joker: Folie à Deux
2024
dir. Todd Phillips
138 min.
Opens Friday, 10/3 in theaters everywhere