After a five year wait, the hotly anticipated Joker: Folie á Deux finally releases this weekend. A musical sequel to 2019’s DC Elseworlds film Joker, the new film follows Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck / Joker as he falls in love with fellow inmate Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, played by the effervescent Lady Gaga. Todd Phillips returns to write and direct, but without the strong homage to Martin Scorsese’s past films, Joker: Folie á Deux refuses to capitalize on its strongest elements and ends up a muddy mess with glimmers of greatness that are stomped out by poor character choices.
Warning: Minor spoilers for Joker: Folie á Deux follow.
Joker meets Harley
As its title suggests, Joker: Folie á Deux finds Arthur lost in an insane love. He encounters “Lee” at a musical class taught at Arkham State Hospital, a psychotic inmate who idolizes Joker and Arthur’s murder of Robert DeNiro’s Murray Franklin two years prior. Falling in love at first glance, Arthur and Lee grow to become quite the pair - albeit mostly in fantasy.
The worst part of Joker: Folie á Deux is undoubtedly its criminal waste of a talent like Lady Gaga. Perfectly cast as a singing Harley Quinn, Gaga excels with what little she’s given. Her performance is on par with Phoenix as Joker, who’s quieter this time around but continually electric onscreen. “Lee” is barely a character, however, with almost all of her scenes and lines shown in the trailers. She’s more of a cardboard cutout to prop beside Joker than a character with emotions, goals, and purpose. You could call her “Harley Quinn in name only”, except the name “Harley Quinn” is never even uttered onscreen.
Gaga’s character is not Harley Quinn. She’s essentially a “female Joker”, but there is no character development to be found in Lee Quinzel, only the slightest crumb of backstory, and no real importance to the overall plot. Her introduction to Arthur is rushed and their conclusion is a pale imitation of what could’ve been. Lee is clearly drawn to Arthur’s power and the movement he’s started, but her interest in Joker goes nowhere and amounts to nothing.
The power dynamics are shifted for this iteration of Joker and Harley. Here, Lee is more intelligent and manipulative than Arthur could ever hope to be. That concept flips their traditional relationship on its head in ways I don’t particularly like, but viewers aren’t given a chance to see how it plays out since that idea also goes nowhere.
It feels like much of Lee’s role was left on the cutting room floor. Multiple iconic shots of Gaga from the film’s trailers are nowhere to be found in the final film and a sequence of her singing “That’s Entertainment” on the famous staircase from the original Joker, captured by apartment residents as the scene was filmed, no longer appears.
Instead, Gaga is mostly relegated to sitting in the courtroom audience as Joker is put on trial. The musical fantasy sequences featuring Joker and Harley on various stages are absolutely perfect but their real-world scenes could offer so much more. An exception is the excellent scene where Lee visits Arthur at Arkham and sings “Close To You”, perhaps the best scene in the film. The allure of their relationship is never illustrated as well as it is here, with both actors at the top of their game and Gaga’s beautiful voice reaching Arthur in a way words cannot.
The beginning of the film may drag and the ending feel too abrupt, but everything in between is even better than expected. Arthur’s trial is livened up by his frequent forays into fantasy and his scenes with Lee are pretty perfect throughout. They’re simply let down by their relationship’s rushed beginning and ending, which make everything in between feel disappointing in retrospect.
Joker becomes a musical
Addressing the elephant in the room, Joker: Folie á Deux is indeed a musical no matter how the director and actors say otherwise. The musical elements work quite well. Strange in the beginning, the songs chosen for the film roar to life when performed by Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga. Phoenix is a much better singer than one may expect, and of course Gaga’s voice is world-famous for good reason.
Some viewers may think there’s too much singing. Speaking as someone who loves musicals, I felt like the songs were overkill after the third or fourth song in Arkham. That feeling quickly vanished as Arthur’s trial began and music became even more of a focal point. Throughout the trial, I couldn’t get enough of the musical numbers and excellent singing. Music is how Arthur expresses emotion and connects to Lee, an idea which comes up in an interesting conversation at the end of the movie but should have been taken further. Regardless, Joker: Folie á Deux absolutely peaks every time Joker and Harley perform classical songs for the throngs of adoring fans in their heads.
The musical aspects of Folie á Deux are very much not the problem with the film. The problems are the thin plot and unrecognizable characters let down by weak story arcs. Making this sequel a musical delusion is the freshest and most on-brand idea Todd Phillips could’ve had for a Joker/Harley Quinn film. It’s a shame the concept was wasted on two original characters in a script that can’t take full advantage of the insanity it offers.
Joker: Folie á Deux could have been great
Joker: Folie á Deux is still an entertaining film I can’t wait to see again. It just stings that the film could’ve been so much more. There are glimmers of perfection in the musical sequences and the chemistry between Phoenix and Gaga, but they’re restrained by a script that’s embarrassed to be adapting Batman villains.
Simple changes would have created a more entertaining story with more character development all around. The easiest changes include actually allowing Joker and Harley to be out on the town causing chaos in Gotham, or keeping the film’s incarceration/trial plot but properly adapting Harley Quinn. If Lady Gaga was playing a psychiatrist that eventually succumbs to Joker’s madness and rallies his supporters for a purpose, the film would be infinitely better.
As it stands, Joker: Folie á Deux is an entertaining road to nowhere anchored by two strong performances, one of which we get criminally little of. And to be clear, by “road to nowhere” I’m not talking about sequels or spin-offs or any interconnected universe shenanigans. I mean the film itself doesn’t carry its good ideas through to a proper ending that pays off the last two hours of the movie you just watched. Instead, Joker: Folie á Deux squanders one of the best casting decisions in comic-book film history and ends on a disappointing Gotham-esque note that cheapens the entire film and its predecessor in one fell swoop.
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