Director: Todd Phillips

Writer: Todd Phillips and Scott Silver

Stars: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, and Catherine Keener

Running Time: 138 minutes

Please note there may be spoilers below

In many ways, Todd Phillip’s Joker: Folie à Deux is a $200 million apology for the first movie, a feature that asks forgiveness for its previous transgressions. When I remind myself about 2019’s Joker, the reaction I have is exhaustion, if only because part of the toxicity of that experience was hinged on the heated debate around its glorification of violence. The truth is Joker (2019)’s biggest issue was its tone-deafness to the times we were living in – in the era of Donald Trump’s presidency, the #metoo movement fallout, the Weinstein revelations, Joker felt like a dodgy uncle who wasn’t welcome to the family reunion. Its amalgamation of angry white maleness, fantasy love interests, mental health decline, and comic book glorification was more than enough to make many of us morally conflicted with the exquisite craft on display. To pose a question, is it really a film we needed to see in 2019?

For anyone hellbent on defending Joker (2019)’s acclaimed existence, I propose a thought experiment: why does Todd Phillips feel the need to spend $200 million on a movie refuting the morality of the first movie if the first movie did nothing wrong? I can’t help but feel it’s an admission of sorts that he wasn’t entirely sincere in his efforts in just giving us entertainment, he was also interested in ruffling our feathers with incendiary cultural commentary. It seems a little late to apologize now.

Set mostly in Arkham State Hospital and a court room, Joker: Folie à Deux is a demure, claustrophobic affair. While some admirable craft is again on display, we are limited mostly to concrete walls, fluorescent lighting, greasy windows and wood panelled legal proceedings. The opening scenes are an awkward attempt at recapturing some of the original’s transgressive magic, if it was ever captured in the first place. Yes, Joaquin Phoenix’s protruding shoulder bones are back, as are those moments of him leaning back and slowly blowing out tendrils of nicotine into oven-baked sunlight.

The story is structured like a legal drama, with interspersed fantasy sequences of jukebox musical numbers. You can almost feel Phillip’s subversive bones vibrate at the bristling of audience members when they realise the movie takes inspiration from Fred Astaire. But it’s not as interesting or as subversive as it sounds. Joker/Arthur Fleck is invited to attend a hospital music class on good behaviour, where he meets the striking Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), a woman with an obsession for him, or at least his Joker alter-ego. She reflects a type of uncomfortable celebrity murderer groupie, like one of those people who wrote Charles Manson fan letters. They immediately form a romantic connection, and she has a knack of somehow showing up when the script needs her, even when Fleck is supposed to be in a maximum-security ward.

Fleck’s lawyer (Catherine Keener) is keen to stick to an old-fashioned insanity plea for his murder trial, but as Fleck’s newly passionate love for Quinzel gives him addition reasons to live, he becomes more unpredictable. Here I’m reminded that the primary suspense of these movies is the tension of how disruptive Joker will become – without this shallow feature, these stories lack any thrill. For most of Joker: Folie à Deux’s running time, Fleck is a subservient and pliant patient of Arkham who is prone to expressing his love via his new hobby of singing – he performs Motown classics, show tunes, pop hits, prancing across the mess hall or courtroom to the reaction of his surrounding cast. These are imaginary sequences mostly, slices of insight into Fleck’s blossoming feelings, and they shamefully carry little weight in comparison to the padding they add to the run time.

Phoenix is enjoying himself, contorting his weathered face in conscious ways. Performing next to the incomparable Lady Gaga in a Sonny and Cher inspired fantasy telecast must have been a big selling point. What is surprising is how dull the legal procedural becomes. Since Fleck/Joker is a bona fide comic book character, the idea of treating him as the defendant in a dreary legal drama is particularly misguided for everyone – fans of the original movie feel no sense of coming danger, no connective tissue to the thill of seeing chaos erupt; and those of you unconvinced by the original will be even less convinced by the sheer puddle-deep legal arguments at play. This film manages to do something special – by trying to walk back the violent glorifications of the first movie and relegating the character to sad neurosis, it's somehow managed to annoy everyone, irritating both fans and naysayers. At a certain point I realised this is why you have Batman in these movies – you just need something else to spare us from the hallow, haunted musings of a dull supervillain in human disguise. For Phillips pretending he’s writing about a human might be enough, but for me it’s the pretending I can’t stand.

I’ll propose another thought experiment for you – imagine if Scorsese had made a sequel to Taxi Driver about the trial of Travis Bickle, one that exposited the reasons behind his mental condition, the Vietnam war, his sad personal life. There would be testimony from characters we’ve already met, speaking about events in the first film we’ve already seen (we were there!). If this sounds like a bad idea, I’m right there with you.