‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ is a Long-Burning (Musical) Fuse to Nowhere
Gaga and Phoenix are great, but the audacious musical character study "Joker: Folie à Deux" doesn’t really go anywhere.
Just when I was ready to declare that Joker: Folie à Deux isn’t a musical, it turned into one. Despite any confusion or misdirection that preceded its release, and notwithstanding that the film eases slowly into having its characters say their piece in song, director Todd Phillips’ sequel to his grim 2019 hit Joker eventually does let its musical-loving freak flag fly.
Though, unlike the Hollywood musicals the movie references through posters, clips, and song and design choices, Folie à Deux doesn’t exude joy or winsome romance. It’s been two years since the events of Joker, and Gotham City is still the same old miserable metropolis.
That’s Gotham City, New York, to be exact, as revealed at the trial of Arthur Fleck — Joker — who, inexplicably has become patron saint to the town’s miserable masses since he killed five people in the first movie. (Only, it’s actually six. The authorities still aren’t aware that Fleck killed his mother, in addition to known victims like TV talk show host Murray Franklin, whom the whole world witnessed Fleck assassinate live on the air.)
Not a cackling cartoon, but a scarily disturbed menace, who just happens to cackle at inopportune times, Fleck claims he was put on Earth to spread joy, but he’s far from a funny madman. The movie, written by Phillips and his Joker co-author Scott Silver, often plays the guy’s madness for laughs, but Joaquin Phoenix, reprising his Oscar-winning role, doesn’t take the portrayal lightly.
Physically transforming into the wiry psychopath, Phoenix crawls into Fleck’s traumatized shell thoroughly enough to evoke sympathy, perhaps from viewers, certainly from some of the guards at Arkham Asylum, where he’s being held until his trial. But the performance always maintains at least a flicker of Arthur Fleck’s fatal narcissism and limitless potential for unhinged violent aggression.
Ostensibly the spark that might fan that flicker into a rage of flame, fellow Arkham inmate Harleen “Lee” Quinzel first appears singing inside a music therapy class on the minimum security wing. Appropriately enough, this songbird is played by Lady Gaga, who underplays Lee’s crazy, while still matching Phoenix’s intensity.
The instant attraction between the characters makes sense, with their shared delusions of grandeur seeming to promise an explosive climax to their sick love story. But, while Phillips nurtures their jailhouse romance into a daring amalgamation of musical fantasy, psychodrama, and crime thriller, Lee and Fleck ultimately fizzle as a combo.
This is not the action-packed franchise debut of Harley Quinn that many of her fans might have hoped for. And not much, plotwise, comes of the pairing other than several tense tête-à-têtes, shot with a liberal-to-overbearing use of closeups, and a soundtrack album’s worth of musical numbers set to tunes like “Get Happy” and “If My Friends Could See Me Now.”
Lee and Fleck lead the songs, usually an expression of some inner thought or invention. Freshly lovestruck, Fleck sings to himself “For Once in My Life,” until gradually, over one long take, the Stevie Wonder classic gathers steam plus offscreen musical accompaniment, finally bursting into a full-on song-and-dance.
Phoenix is not a song-and-dance man, per se. He’s an enthusiastic singer, not a good one, a fact never more apparent than when he and Gaga, who knows her way around a showtune, trade lines in a song.
Yet, Fleck’s not meant to be Frank Sinatra — no matter how many times Phillips repeats Ol’ Blue Eyes singing “That’s Life” on the soundtracks of both Joker films. (It might hit double digits by the end of this one.) The proper feelings register even when Fleck is warbling “Bewitched (Bothered and Bewildered)” during a TV interview with smarmy host Paddy Meyers, played by Steve Coogan, just one of the film’s solid supporting lineup.
Reprising their roles from Joker, Zazie Beetz, as Fleck’s former neighbor Sophie, and Leigh Gill, as former clown co-worker Puddles, both deliver compelling turns as their characters take the witness stand in Fleck’s trial.
And The Banshees of Inisherin’s Brendan Gleeson is subtly layered as gruff Arkham guard Jackie Sullivan, who treats his serial killer charge like he’s a movie star — especially since some network actually made a TV movie about Fleck and the murders he committed. The running joke is that Fleck’s dying to know how the movie is, since his doctors won’t let him see it.
We never see a second of it either, but can rest assured that whatever the quality of the flick, it only added to Fleck’s infamy, which, in this miserable Gotham is a currency as potent as any other. Clearly, he could shoot somebody point blank in the middle of Fifth Avenue and he wouldn’t lose any fans. But we knew that already.
Joker: Folie à Deux (★★☆☆☆) is rated R, and is playing in theaters nationwide. Visit www.fandango.com.
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