Joker: Folie à Deux
JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX
Directed by Todd Phillips
Five years ago WB released JOKER, a grim, dark, stripped-down portrait of mental illness using DC comics characters as stand-ins to trick people into seeing a type of movie they normally wouldn't. I absolutely despised it, a top to bottom Martin Scorsese ripoff. Seriously if you've never seen TAXI DRIVER or THE KING OF COMEDY, it will genuinely piss you off how much of JOKER is just those 2 movies. Who cares though, right? 2019's JOKER grossed OVER a billion dollars and was nominated for 11(!) Oscars, even winning a couple.
Five years later, here we have the inevitable sequel, a $200 million jukebox musical of old American song standards co-starring Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn. What follows is supremely stupid, often bizarre, and uninterested in giving the audience what it wants/expects and I gotta say I was pretty entertained.
I have a soft spot for major blockbusters that subvert expectations and give me what I didn't know I wanted or needed. Director Todd Phillips clearly has issues with the first movie being misinterpreted and adopted by fanboy incels and this entire sequel is a huge middle finger to them and honestly anyone that likes the first movie. Maybe that's why I had such a great time.
The sequel follows Joker (Joaquin Phoenix, sometimes great sometimes grating) now in Arkham Asylum waiting trial for the murders of the first movie, even more of a broken man than he was before. One day he meets a fellow inmate played by Gaga (oustanding and maybe underused) and they instantly hit it off, bringing music into his life for the first time. Like the rest of the movie a lot of the musical numbers are not what you usually expect, often stripped down but fit perfectly into the world created here.
The film gets better as it goes along and by the time we get to the real meat of the movie, the trial and courtroom scenes, it really pops. Going over the events of the first JOKER via trial as well as a TV movie of the first films events that characters refer to throughout gives FOLIE À DEUX meta contextual self-awareness that I absolutely vibed with and repels others. I'm reminded of MATRIX RESURRECTIONS, another recent sequel that commented and meditated on its existence and audience expectations. General public hated that one too while I found it to be a masterpiece. JOKER 2 isn't as good as that, but it's a huge creative swing that can stand on its own two feet. An artistic blockbuster that hates itself and the audience and wants you to know it. Some of it was breathtaking, especially in full IMAX 70mm, but don't get me wrong, this is still stupid as shit but it's UNIQUE and I will always appreciate that.
🎶The Joker Is Me🎶
🤡🤡🤡 Out of 4
