Box office bomb “Joker: Folie à Deux” cries on the inside
Peter Howell
Movie Critic
Until now, it seemed Francis Ford Coppola’s insane “Megalopolis” and Kevin Costner’s interminable “Horizon: An American Saga” would stand as the year’s most reckless cinematic statements by celebrated filmmakers.
Then along comes Todd Phillips with “Joker: Folie à Deux,” as if to say, “Hold my beer.”
His ill-considered sequel to the Oscar-winning and billion-dollar-grossing “Joker” from 2019 goes out of its way to be everything the compelling first film wasn’t.
Which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing — nobody wants another formulaic followup — except writer-director Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver obviously had no idea what kind of movie they were trying to make. “Joker” had something to say to the world; “Folie à Deux” (the title means “madness of two”) just seems to be muttering and warbling incoherently to itself.
Packed into the film’s wearisome 138-minute running time is a jukebox musical, a courtroom procedural, a soapy love story, a disorienting identity quest, a violent cultural commentary and a Looney Tunes-inspired cartoon. The last, represented by a short segment that opens the film, reprises the violence of “Joker” and is by Oscar-nominated animator Sylvain Chomet (“The Triplets of Belleville”).
The most bizarro move of all was to pair Joaquin Phoenix with Lady Gaga in a musical riff on the Joker and Harley Quinn crazed romance familiar to fans of DC Comics films and publications. (Harley becomes “Lee Quinzel” in this version.)
FULL REVIEW: https://bit.ly/3zQvjbB
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