When the Joker sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux was mentioned to be a musical a few years ago, most of the original film’s fans found themselves confused and not hopeful of what this character and the director Todd Phillips planned with it. As someone who enjoys musicals and has many of them in their favorite films, I stayed interested in this new idea brought to the big screen, especially with the news the media gave us throughout the years, such as Lady Gaga acting as the iconic Harley Quinn, Joker’s criminal partner.
Joker: Folie à Deux is a film with big ideas and plans, with little realization of them and with shoes too big to fill. I do not believe the original Joker film to be a masterpiece or anything of the sort, even with some flaws in the first act highlighting the weird timing it can have at times. However, this sequel changes how most people would envision the story to go, with an abrupt ending which felt extremely anticlimactic and just seems like a lazy shock resource from the director.
Even when not comparing it to its predecessor, Joker: Folie à Deux fails as a musical. The idea of using the musical aspect to show our main character’s slow descent into madness and using that same musical aspect as his way to cope with everything surrounding him was an interesting plot, but the way in which the film incorporates the songs is extremely out of place. The songs feel very forced upon the viewer as well as not being relevant to the plot at all and not even being a good showcase of Joker’s mental health. Some of the songs sounded okay, but Joaquin Phoenix’s voice is not built for musicals, and it would have been a lot better to have more campy and extravagant musical acts, making it easier for both the audience and the film itself to divide its acts/scenes more easily.
Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn could have been huge for the film adding to the musical aspect, but she just ended up being misused and was not shown enough. The title of the movie “Folie à Deux” means delusion shared by two people in close association and it definitely wants us to focus on the classic Joker and Harley Quinn history we have seen in comics and other media forms, but it feels as if they introduced Harley Quinn for nothing and was completely thrown to the sidelines in the final act of the movie. The movie didn’t leave much for the audience to be engaged with or wonder about Harley Quinn’s character.
Joker Folie à Deux is a film with a lot of exciting ideas, but none of them are done correctly and just end up with a $200 million disaster which is now rated as the worst comic book horror film by CinemaScore with a D. I would not recommend this movie to anyone reading and would just tell you to save your money instead.
