Movie Review: Joker: Folie à Deux

 

Michael's Movie Grade: C

A decent movie on its own but it does not work as a Joker film at all. 

I don't believe that every comic book movie needs to be comic accurate (I love Tim Burton's Batman movies for instance) but there is a point when a film can differ enough from the source material that you wonder why it was based on the comics at all. Todd Philips' first Joker film may not have been comic accurate, but it was a clever twist on the DC comics character. For this sequel though, he seems to abandon any connection to the classic supervillain. In fact, if you took out the moments where the words "The Joker" are said or seen, even the most avid DC Comics fans wouldn't recognize that this movie was supposed to be about him. In fact, Phillips only seems interested in going as far against who the character is as he can. It seems like he is even going out of his way to make DC fans angry. This even includes a baffling ending that is nothing but a slap in the face to DC fans. Beyond that I was left wondering what exactly the filmmakers were thinking with this ending. If it was meant to be clever or some sort of deconstruction of the character, it didn't work. In fact, it just made everything that happened not only in this film but the first as well seem completely pointless. 

This is not to say that there is nothing I liked about this movie. I may be in the minority, but I personally loved the musical numbers. Not only were they stylish and fun (plus Lady Gaga has a fantastic voice) but they served their role in this movie quite well. They let us into the deranged minds of these characters and how they saw their fantasies in the vein of a classic Hollywood musical. Speaking of classic Hollywood musicals, movie buffs will love the wonderful homages to many classic films. There is even a scene where the prisoners are watching the Fred Astaire classic, The Band Wagon (1953). Later in the film our main characters sing one of the classic songs from that movie. This movie also benefits from some truly incredible performances from Joaquin Pheonix and Lady Gaga as The Joker and Harley Quinn. Like the last Joker movie, this film is a perfect showcase for Pheonix's acting abilities and he completely loses himself in this role. The callbacks to the first film are also very well done and actually provide this movie with its most powerful moments. The movie also started with a delightful animated sequence from Sylvain Chomet (who directed and wrote the great animated feature The Triplets of Belleville (2003)).

This movie does have a lot of pacing problems. There is no reason for it to be as long as it is, and the middle section drags on much too long. This film honestly could have been at least an hour shorter and still worked. 

This may not be a bad movie (though it does have its flaws) but it is a bad Joker movie.