There are many thoughts that run through your head when, after watching Joker: Folie à Deux, you walk out of the theater. The loudest of them all is, "Todd Phillips should never again make a musical." Here is a director who doesn't understand what makes musicals...magical. Good filmmakers are able to make that smooth transition from dialogues to songs. We don't think, "Why are these people singing all of a sudden?" The filmmakers remove the "weirdness factor." Phillips, though, doesn't have that skill or that intuition. He fails to execute the tropes of a musical. There is no sense of awe in Joker: Folie à Deux's song sequences. They occur inside Arthur's (Joaquin Phoenix) head - his fantasy world is filled with songs and dance. But this dream world isn't nightmarish or fantastical. It's very literal, and we enter this realm unimaginatively with sudden cuts. Once inside, we don't feel Arthur's obsession. Phillips impersonally displays his body movements. He seems uncomfortable filming the musical portions. The movie becomes worse when characters sing outside Arthur's head, i.e., in the real world. The issue is that Phillips merely sees lyrics as a substitute for dialogue. He doesn't supply any rhythm to the words that come out of the characters' lips in the form of a song. This mixture of unmemorable music and uncreative execution, after a while, generates plenty of yawns. Arthur, towards the end, tells Lee (Lady Gaga) to stop singing - he requests her to talk like a normal person. This is the kind of comment we start making after 30 or 40 minutes into the film. What all this means is that as a musical, Joker: Folie à Deux is a tuneless disaster - a nightmare for the fans of musicals.
Even as a psychological thriller, Joker: Folie à Deux is atrocious. In the first part, Phillips at least managed to bring out Arthur's madness. He turned it into a wild, chaotic, unhinged spectacle. Arthur's craziness was so powerfully rendered that it affected us, which is why the film was surrounded by so much noise (some critics thought it would have a negative impact on the audience). Did Joker work because it borrowed its parts from The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver? After watching this sequel, you think, "Sure, that could be the reason." For Joker: Folie à Deux, Phillips touches The Band Wagon in the most generic sense. He uses it as an excuse to create his own musical production. Arthur enjoys the famous song from The Band Wagon (That's Entertainment), and he sees himself as a Fred Astaire-like dancer in his head. The Arthur we observe here has somewhat moved on from that figure who wanted to be a stand-up comedian. He is in love in this sequel - he has found himself an equally insane woman. Hence, Arthur considers himself a romantic hero, not a comedian. But he still inspires people around him to participate in his madness, though the results this time are utterly unbelievable. Arthur looks like a weak, uninteresting loser. With a sad, sometimes morose, and sometimes happy face, Arthur comes across as a creep who has nothing interesting or galvanizing to say to anyone. You are not convinced by all those scenes where the inmates come together to support Arthur. What do they all see in this thin-as-a-stick man? He is the kind of person who becomes the target of bullies, not a leader of deranged humans.
The public, meanwhile, has come out more strongly in support of Arthur after watching a TV movie based on his life. That movie could very well be the 2019 Joker, and the public's admiration is nothing but that film's incredible box office performance. But it's not just the characters; Joker: Folie à Deux, too, loves the prequel so much that it spends most of its time referencing and discussing that film's events. Arthur, for what looks like a million times, is asked about that Murray Franklin incident. At one point, that "You wouldn't get it" moment is unnecessarily recreated. The callbacks are so frequent that Arthur himself screams at an interviewer for digging up the old Arthur instead of focusing on what's in the present. He also blames the interviewer for promoting sensationalism, which is something you can also say about this film's director. Phillips presents Arthur's malnourished body as an enticement. His acts of violence are like shallow triggers that aim to excite the audience. When the mentally ill criminal imagines a Joker and Harley show, we see him telling his partner that they should give the audience what they truly desire. Seconds later, Harley injures Joker by pulling the trigger. This is Phillips' way of suggesting that we loved Joker and have come to the sequel because we want images depicting torture (Arthur laughs maniacally in the rain while being tied to a pole). We want to look at scenes like the one where Joker hits a lawyer with a chair and murders a judge with a gavel.
Arthur, however, doesn't want to shed blood. He doesn't want to become Joker. This distinction between the two personalities is made clear through an opening animated short as well as verbal expositions. Phillips is not a subtle director. Arthur wants to leave the life of crime, but the people around him, both the haters and the supporters, push him towards the arena of crime and murder. Is this Phillips' confession? Did he want to do something different with the film but was put inside a box by Warner Bros. Pictures? Or did he want to move on from Joker but was forced to return to this world after all the intense acclaim as well as negative reactions? Phillips loves the demented guy at the center. He dances with him through an unbroken shot (the sequence takes place inside Arthur's head). However, as Joker: Folie à Deux progresses, Phillips cuts himself off from the onscreen events. Arthur's actions, as a result, appear devoid of an emotional charge. We merely watch Phoenix twisting his body and disturbing the surface of his face with wrinkles - we catch an actor acting to impress the audience. After an excess of mind-numbing tedium, Phillips inserts a moral lesson along the lines of "stoke the fire of hate, and it will consume you in the end." It's all very laughable. Still, the last scene certainly yells this statement: Phillips is tired of this universe. Hence, I wasn't surprised when I learned from Wikipedia that the director has finally moved on from Joker. If he had been forced to return for a third installment, one suspects he would have behaved like the titular lunatic clown on the sets.
Final Score- [2/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times