Joker: Folie à Deux

(Warning: Contains spoilers)

Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) released October 4, 2024 is the sequel to the much more successful Joker (2019), both starring Joaquin Phoenix in the titular role. The film has received mostly negative reviews and low rating scores amongst critics and audiences alike. It also has been a flop at the box office and even allegedly had audience members walking out mid-showing. This negative response is due largely to the fact that it was a musical, and a lot of people apparently didn’t go in prepared for it to be a musical.

There were a few good things about the movie. Lady Gaga in the role of Harley “Lee” Quinzel, Joker’s girlfriend, gave a surprisingly good performance. While her acting might not be quite polished, especially compared against her much more experienced costar, her singing is highly skilled. Lady Gaga does not sound like Lee does, and so she had to modulate her voice. The entire movie she’s panting and gasping as she sings: signs of Lee’s mania.

Joaquin Phoenix, who has sung and danced in roles before now, similarly gave an unsurprisingly good performance as a musical Joker. The problem, though, is that the musical numbers felt unnecessary the entire movie and take us out of the story. Most (though not all of them) happen either primarily or entirely inside the minds of either Arthur Fleck (AKA “Joker”), Lee, or both of them together.

After all, the movie is subtitled “Folie à Deux,” a term which translates as “madness of two” and refers to an actual psychological condition in which two or more individuals in close relation to one another share the same psychosis or paranoid delusions, “transmitted” from one person into the others. In this case, it refers primarily to the madness that is the concept of “the Joker” and what he represents: the violent destruction of a cruel and unjust society and laughing while doing it.

However, it also represents the madness transmitted from Lee to Fleck, which is her perception of the world as a musical. This is unfortunate because every time the movie gets interesting or intense, a song and dance number interrupts it, which I get is the point. It represents escaping into a fantasy to not have to deal with reality, but it’s annoying to watch.

All that said, Joker: Folie à Deux is not a terrible movie, and I don’t feel like it deserves the hate it has been receiving. I wanted to hate it but couldn’t. It has a lot of great moments, good acting, and striking visuals, and even the constant music, while distracting, makes a fun soundtrack.

The most divisive aspect to the film, though, is that (major spoiler incoming…) Arthur Fleck is not THE Joker. That doesn’t seem to me like it should be that big of a surprise because it seemed obvious by the end of the first movie. The sequel introduces us to the actual Joker in the final scene, which I found too predictable. In fact, I pointed and said (we were watching in a totally empty theater, so I didn’t spoil it for anyone else), “that’s the real Joker, and he’s going to take Fleck’s place at the end of the movie.” All of which is foreshadowed by a dream sequence, styled after Looney Tunes, to which the film opens.

It’s the logical ending, even though it’s understandable why it would upset fans of Phoenix’s Joker. It just takes forever for us to get there with all the musical numbers, and the ending makes the love story between “Joker” and Lee irrelevant. But I guess that’s supposed to be the joke, isn’t it? It’s all falsehoods.

In the end, it honestly feels like Joker didn’t need a sequel in the first place, and the original crew didn’t want to make one, so instead they gave the studio something they knew would flop. “Let’s give the people what they want,” Lee says at one point (featured in a trailer), but then proceeds to do the opposite, so maybe that’s the biggest joke of all.