This next installment into the story of Arthur Fleck picks up with him locked up In Arkham Hospital for the various crimes he had committed in the first Joker. While awaiting his trial he meets up with another patient, Lee Quinzel and together the two place their musical mark on Gotham.
I won’t lie, I’ve really struggled with this one over the past few days. The first Joker was one of my favorite movies of 2019, and personally I did not want a sequel.
Starting with the things I liked however, the acting. There is not one role in here that I think is done poorly. The material given to the actors didn’t work the best for me, but what the performers did with it was great.
Of course, Joaquin Phoenix crushes as Arthur Fleck/Joker. He brings everything that he brought to the first Joker back for the sequel, and he is great to watch. Another stand out in the movie was Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel. For this iteration of the character, I think she brings it, and all of the musical sequences involving her are quite engaging.
Another thing that I thought the movie did really well was its camera work. The movie is super satisfying to look at, and the colors and tones chosen make the world feel more alive when necessary, and drabber and more depressing when necessary. There was one really great shot in the trailers where Arthur leans into a smile drawn on some glass, and honestly that level of thought seemed to have gone into a good amount of the shots throughout.
Where I start to lean into more of the negative is firstly, the musical aspect of the movie. I will admit that for the first 20 minutes, I was rather on board for what they were going for. But as the movie continued, I grew tired of them rather quickly. I found myself getting pulled out of the movie in most of them. They do, however, explain why the movie is a musical, and I was able to appreciate that, but more often than not I found myself longing for the singing to conclude.
Where the movie really did a number on my enjoyment was in the story and writing. I loved the first one because of all the open doors it left by the end. This movie rather quickly dispatches a lot of that mystery. It also felt like the movie wasn’t quite sure how to handle Arthur in some ways. When we meet up with him again, he has reverted to the same person he was at the beginning of the first movie, and I found myself asking what happened to the character that he became?
The movie also feels like two movies compacted down into one. The first half is following Arthur and Lee throughout the hospital, while the second half becomes a courtroom drama. Funny enough, I found myself more invested in the second half of the movie, so while my enjoyment of the music was going down, my investment of the story was going up and those two things taking place simultaneously became a recipe for disaster.
At the end of the day, was this movie absolutely horrible? No, but boy did it leave me disappointed. I loved Phoenix’s take of the Joker, and by the end of this movie it feels like that take on the character has been completely dismantled. I’m going to give Joker: Folie a Deux a 5/10. I hope the next time we as an audience invest in a Joker character, the story won’t conclude feeling like the joke is on us.