I don’t know if people care anymore about spoilers for this film, but no spoilers and then spoilers I guess, it’s movie time everybody.

Joker: Folie à Deux stars Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Zazie Beetz, Catherine Keener, Harry Lawtey, Brendan Gleeson, and Steve Coogan. It was written by Scott Silver and Todd Phillips and directed by Todd Phillips.

How Did We Get Here? –
Five years ago, a movie came out. It was an R-rated, “gritty and real” comic book movie, that become the highest grossing R-rated movie of all time, (Until a few months ago) won a few Oscars, and became a well-liked movie. A guy named John Joseph Skrip saw this movie with his father. His father hated it. John liked it a lot, thought it was a 9/10, real interesting stuff. And then he rewatched it a few times and thought about it more and became a person who didn’t like movies that are edgy and mostly substanceless and now here we stand. I’m that guy. I hate the movie Joker. And I was not excited for this.
This sequel is about Arthur Fleck facing charges for his multiple murders in court. But now there’s all those people who fell in love with the idea of “Joker” and what he symbolized as a societal chaos agent who could change things and make the world more fun and insane. I’m talking about the characters in the movie, not the people in real life who thought the story was about more than just a depressed mentally ill man who had been fucked over by everyone and everything and got pushed too far, only to fall for his own delusions and believe people had truly seen him and now loved him for who he was. You didn’t get that from the first movie? The thing it was obviously about? Oh, well, are you an idiot? Did you not realize after rewatching it that the concept of watching a mentally ill man’s life fall apart was exploitative and cruel and unlikeable? Did you not realize a sequel would be even more depressing and unnecessary? I’m not usually this mean to my readers, but I’m getting on board with the edgy tone.
Anyway, Todd Phillips, the man who directed the Hangover movies and should really stop making movies, decided his cynical examination of society and mental health should get a sequel. And then he kind of hated making it and decided he would never make another one again. Yay! But we still get this film, an unnecessary addition to a story that makes it all worse. But here’s the twist. Joker’s not alone in his madness anymore. Lady Gaga is here to play Harley Quinn. Except she’s not really Harley Quinn. And he’s not really the Joker. And these aren’t really comic book movies. They’re sad ripoffs of Scorsese movies. Or at least the first one is. This one is a muddled mess. But I digress.

Quick Plot Rundown –
Two years after killing six people, (Three subway pricks, one fellow clown, one abusive mom, and one Robert De Niro.) Arthur Fleck is standing trial for his crimes. He’s an inmate at Arkham Asylum, where he’s abused and treated horribly by a gang of cruel guards led by a somewhat affable but still menacing Brendan Gleeson, who seems to have enhanced his Irishness for this performance. Before his trial he meets and falls in love with Lee Quinzel, a fellow Arkham inmate, who is soon released and works to “Build a mountain from a little hill” for them once he gets out. She never explains what that means. Over time Arthur becomes emboldened by Lee’s support and his “followers” and he gets some of his Joker swagger back. But will he manage to prove to the jury that he deserves to be free and the Joker persona is the result of a split personality disorder? Who knows? I do. Also every once in a while there’s a song because Joker and Lee love music.

General Non-Spoilery Thoughts –
It’s not good, though I want to clarify that I don’t agree with the masses on the internet, it’s not much worse than the first film. I might even like it a tiny bit more. I don’t like either of them. This one just tries to do something slightly different and more interesting. I don’t feel it succeeds. I think it’s fascinating that this exists, as it’s not something the majority of people who loved the first one would enjoy, and it also works to invalidate all the reasons those people loved it to begin with. The consensus is that it’s long and boring and depressing and Lady Gaga is underused and the musical bits don’t work. I mostly agree. There were two songs I enjoyed. A very small part of me is disappointed this didn’t prove me wrong and it wasn’t a bombastic insane musical with a great Lady Gaga performance belting out songs and an Oscar worthy performance. But it’s what I thought it would be. They didn’t commit to the musical or her as a character and it’s a mess.
The main reason I hate it though is that it’s not a comic book movie. The fact that he’s not really the Joker is a massive plot point in this film, but it also means the whole thing is fairly irrelevant. If you changed the first one so they didn’t say “Gotham” or “Thomas Wayne” or “Arkham Asylum”, it would just be a Joaquin Phoenix movie where he went insane. I don’t know if it would’ve made a billion dollars, I don’t know if he would’ve won an Oscar, it would’ve probably gone straight to streaming, and people would say “Hey, he sure looks like the Joker”. And in this one, Lee Quinzel is just a woman who falls in love with the idea of a psychopath and uses him. Harvey Dent is in this, but he has no traits of a Harvey Dent we’ve seen, he’s just a man that looks like a five year old boy in a big suit. At one point they forget what movie they’re making and refer to the court case as “Arthur Fleck VS The People of New York City”. It’s Gotham. Come on. Gotham’s not even in New York. It’s in New York City. When the first one came out people were like “Marvel movies are for children and this is a legitimately mature comic book movie”. For that to be the case it has to have some aspects of the comic books it’s adapting.

Characters –
Arthur Fleck AKA Joker (But is he really?) – Joaquin Phoenix
I think Joaquin Phoenix is a good actor and he did deserve to win the Oscar for that first one, but boy do I hate this character. He’s whiney and sad and everyone is mean to him even though until he killed six people he’d done nothing wrong. We learn in this that his mom thought he was an idiot for believing her that he deserved something better in life and that he was funny and he could make the world brighter with his jokes. And he gets the shit kicked out of him by life over and over and over again. He’s mentally ill. And he can’t fix anything or remove himself from the spiral he’s been placed in.
Still, he’s a fucking idiot. He’s easily manipulated to make terrible decisions and the more he leans into the persona he thinks he should have and the version of himself he thinks he should be, the worse his life gets and the more he ruins things for himself. And I know he can’t help it, but he plays it in a way that makes him seem arrogant and unlikeable. Yeah, I don’t know, I do think this character is not fun to watch because it’s an incredibly depressing concept.

Lee Quinzel AKA Harley Quinn (But is she really?) – Lady Gaga
The way she plays this is meant to be like Squeaky Fromme, Charles Manson’s groupie. She reveals later in the film that she wasn’t actually an arsonist who killed her parents like she told Arthur, but a rich psych major who fell in love with the idea of the Joker and checked herself in to Arkham to meet him. You’re led to believe throughout the film that she’s using him, that she manipulates him, and it never comes to anything meaningful, story-wise. She’s a good singer though. I don’t think she ever really gets to go all out in a fun way.

Score/Soundtrack –
The songs that feature are largely not that memorable. At one point “Dancing In The Moonlight” played diegetically and Katy and I grooved along but it wasn’t part of the musical. The score was, to what I could tell, much less overly intense and overbearing in this one. Anyway, I don’t really care.

Cinematography –
Didn’t pay attention. Looked fine.

Ugh. I mean I guess it’s spoiler time, isn’t it?

Not that it matters.

Not that anything matters.

Isn’t that what these movies are about?

Some idiot who makes bad raunchy comedies can spend years being cynical and unlikeable and then make a billion dollars on a bad film that isn’t actually saying anything.

And now I had to watch the sequel because I have a blog.

But it’s not a Joker movie, it’s not a superhero film, is it?

It’s just some sad man that everybody hates and then he shoots a man in the head.

Great stuff. Who gives a shit?

Spoilers. Yay.

Joker: Folie à Deux Spoiler Review
Arthur gets his swagger back once Lee convinces him to fire his lawyer and represent himself. He goes full Joker in court minus the hair dye though I severely doubt any Judge would allow that to happen. It makes no real sense. After the prison guards get tired of his attitude and assault him in the showers (Awful and depressing) and kill his friend, (Extra depressing) Arthur goes back into court and says that he’s not Joker, he’s just a sad man who killed a bunch of people. Yep. At this point, Lee, who loved and believed in the chaos, and told him she was pregnant with his child (I never believed that, they had two seconds of gross sex in a conjugal prison visit inside a solitary confinement cell. I also didn’t think that could ever be allowed to happen.) leaves.
A massive explosion blows up the courtroom as the guilty verdict is read out. You think it’s Lee, but no. It’s Joker’s followers. Even though he’s closest to the wall he doesn’t die. Most of the people in the courtroom do die. And Harvey Dent’s face gets scratched a little. Great. They don’t even want to give him a proper half face. Arthur gets rescued by some other Jokers, fans of his, makes his way back to the stairs, and sees Lee, who tells him it’s over. She never loved him. She never would. And he goes back to Arkham, where he’s stabbed by an inmate with a spooky smile, who’s been in the background the whole time. And this inmate makes the same joke he made when he killed De Niro, and gives himself the Heath Ledger facial scars. Just like the internet suspected, Fleck had inspired the true Joker all along. And all that had to happen was the complete destruction of this man’s life, as he slowly lost everything and was shat on by everyone. The movie ends where the first one did, but worse, and more depressing, somehow.

Is this a good sequel?
No, not really. Again, I didn’t like the first one either, but a lot of stuff from the first one ends up disregarded. Were the Wayne’s actually killed? We’re not to know. Arthur’s laughing at inappropriate times disease happens somewhat as an afterthought throughout the film. Zazie Beetz and Gary, the poor guy that was nice to Arthur and had to watch a murder, both return, but mainly to explain their scenes from the first movie over again.

Are there some good bits?
I mean, yeah. I think this one actually is more darkly funny than the first, and he does some funny things, though some unintentionally, and most of them tinged with a sadness. At the start of the film there’s an animated short called “Me and My Shadow” in the style of old cartoons that’s comedically sadistic and bloody. That was fun. He does a Southern accent in court. And a British one too, I thought. And some of the more theatrical dream sequence musical numbers were fun. I just think overall, it was depressing and didn’t work. Though again, there were more interesting ideas at play.

Overall Rating – 2.6/10(Let’s say the first one is a 1, and this is on a different scale, really. If he had actually been a criminal with schemes and mischief and fell in some acid or something and other villains were there, it’d get many more points.)
Rudd Rating – 1/10(Paul Rudd isn’t in this, but his friend and occasional collaborator Steve Coogan is, and that’s not nothing.)