The biggest sin committed by Joker: Folie à Deux is its inability to be a proper sequel. Ideally, sequels should expand a story, enrich the characters, and take the audience on an unexpected journey filled with new people and places. Here we meet new people and see new places, but the story and characters are firmly stuck in the first movie, unwilling and unable to develop or grow. Director and co-writer Todd Phillips continually teases interesting new ideas and themes but never makes good on them. In fact, at times he purposefully sets something up only to tear it down. As a result, Joker: Folie à Deux might be the most non-sequel sequel ever made. It’s act one of the next chapter stretched into a full movie, which is simultaneously unsatisfying and frustrating.
When we last left Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), he’d just murdered a TV host on live television, setting off a wave of chaos and destruction in Gotham City. Two years later, Arthur has been in prison and is getting ready to go on trial, but his popularity hasn’t waned. The city still seems obsessed with Arthur’s alter ego, Joker, and proving those two personas are different is the key component to his defense. Wait, we’re sorry. Arthur in prison awaiting trial is where the live-action portion of the movie starts off. The actual start of the movie is a Looney Tunes-style cartoon that adds nothing to the story or tone besides setting up a pattern of confusion and disappointment that will continue throughout the film.
Soon Arthur meets Lee (Lady Gaga), a patient in the prison’s minimum security wing who reveals she’s a Joker superfan. The two kick off a romance; the only way for the lovebirds to express their emotions is large-scale musical numbers, with Arthur and Lee singing pop standards or show tunes either in the prison or other fantasy locations. These scenes are beautiful and often quite entertaining. Plus, the way Phillips cuts them in, we are left guessing what’s real and what isn’t, and oftentimes we guess incorrectly.
Through all of this, Joker: Folie à Deux keeps our interest. Will Arthur be able to get away with murder? How will his newfound love change him as a person? Can Gotham City handle the fact the trial is being broadcast on TV? We do get some answers to those questions but rarely in the way we expect. Arthur mostly remains the same old Arthur, sad and quiet sometimes, boisterous and violent at others. From the first scenes through the ending, he rarely deviates or reveals new insight into his psyche. Lee is the one thing that does change Arthur a bit, making her a perfect complement, but the film later reveals things about the character that undercut much of that.
Once the trial begins though, Joker: Folie à Deux really loses its way. What we hope will be an entertaining, tense, surprising affair becomes an extended rehash of the first movie, with characters from it returning to testify and tell us things we already know. We think that’ll change when Arthur, seemingly out of nowhere, fires his lawyer and decides to defend himself. Again though, with this Phillips sets up the potential for something special and it doesn’t pay off. We basically get one full scene of Arthur the Lawyer where it’s clear neither he nor the movie have any clue what to do with this idea.
All the while, Joker: Folie à Deux keeps teasing its audience in unsatisfying ways. Will Arthur and Lee’s musical fantasies amount to anything? They don’t. Does Lee’s fandom for Joker say anything in particular about the nature of celebrity? Not really. Scenes we want to be longer are not. Scenes we want to be short are long. And each time the film sets up a question to be answered and either doesn’t or completely flips it on its head, it gets increasingly maddening. This may have been the point but it doesn’t quite work.
All of which may have been okay if any of it amounted to something. Some justification for the ping pong game Phillips is playing with the film’s plot and themes. Instead, without spoiling anything, the film’s third act aggressively goes against everything on an even grander stage. It not only blows up this film, but the first film too, leaving us to wonder why the heck we watched any of this in the first place.
To be fair, there are some good things going on in Joker: Folie à Deux. As one may expect, Joaquin Phoenix is just as impressive as he was in the original film, for which he won an Academy Award. Lady Gaga is electric throughout and every time she’s on screen, either as Lee or some musical fantasy version of her, the film lights up and is better for it. And the cinematography by Lawrence Sher is sumptuous, giving the whole movie a very retro, epic feel. It’s just a shame the good work of those people and everyone else is betrayed by the story they are telling.
Joker: Folie à Deux is less about Arthur than it’s a stand-in for him. It’s a movie, as well as a character, that isn’t quite sure what it wants to be, or even what it is, so it messes around and ultimately decides it doesn’t want to be anything at all. At least the first Joker left you with some things to think about. Here you’re just left frustrated at everything that could have been or never was.
Joker: Folie à Deux is in theaters Friday.
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