Todd Phillips’ 2019 Joker film was meant to be a standalone spinoff, unconnected to anything in the DC Cinematic Universe (DCEU). That film went onto be incredibly divisive, critics split down the middle, but audiences largely taking to what Phillips and co. had made, as the film went on to make over a billion dollars worldwide. Joker is a film that clearly intended to be about something. It wanted to take on the disenfranchisement young men have felt by the world around them, by focusing on this character who was driven mad by the society around him. I did not like that movie at all. And yet, the announcement of a sequel to Joker, this time a musical co-starring Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn – it felt like Todd Phillips was trying to appeal directly to me. So, I was excited going into Joker: Folie à Deux, despite having hated the first film. As I sat in the theater yesterday watching Folie à Deux unfold, it became increasingly clear…this time, the joke was on me.

Two years after the events of Joker, we find Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) in custody at Arkham Asylum, awaiting trial for the murders he committed in the first film. One day, he passes by a music therapy class where he meets Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), and the two begin to fall madly in love. At his trial, his lawyer (Catherine Keener) argues that Arthur suffers from dissociative identity disorder, the Joker persona being something of an evil alter ego that was responsible for his crimes. As Arthur’s descent into obsession and love with Lee intensifies, he begins to lose himself further, resulting in mounting chaos.

The fact that Joker: Folie à Deux is released one week after Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, is certainly not lost on me. The two have something very specific in common. These are expensive films that take bold, audacious swings that are seemingly uninterested in appealing to any audience group. And while it’s easy to admire the chutzpah, neither of these films work, and in fact they fail spectacularly. Joker: Folie à Deux is a hot mess, and literally nothing works. 

I genuinely have no idea who this movie is for. It doesn’t work as a musical, because it seems like Todd Phillips is terrified of making a musical. Each number only lasts a minute or two, none of them have the production value or verve they need to really shine. In a musical, the songs normally serve one of two purposes, sometimes both. They can either move the story along, or they can be more character driven, telling you something you didn’t know before about the people the story is following. The songs in Folie á Deux do neither. They grind the film to a halt and they do nothing to support the plot (what there is of one) and these characters really don’t have much to them.

Sidebar – the great Lady Gaga was directed to tone down her actual singing voice to give her vocals a more “realistic” vibe. When you have one of the best vocalists in the game today in a musical movie, even if it is a jukebox musical like this, you don’t ask her to sing badly. Joaquin Phoenix can’t hold a tune to save his life, and they’re asking Lady Gaga to sing poorly. It’s genuinely baffling. There are a lot of stylistic callbacks to great musicals of yesteryear, but this only illuminates everything Phillips is doing wrong.

This sequel will also bring in fans of Lady Gaga, and they’re bound to be disappointed as well. Gaga is frustratingly underused here. Instead of the two-hander the advertising material promised, Gaga is relegated to what is basically a side character, only appearing in about 30 minutes or so of the film. We barely get to know her character, and for a film about the Joker/Harley Quinn relationship, she should be as front and center as he is. It feels like a significant portion of her character is cut from this movie, as many scenes involving her from the trailers and marketing materials are suspiciously missing from the final cut of this film. In theory, I would like to see the cut of this film with more of what Gaga was bringing to it, but also I would rather eat glass than sit through this again.

And while Gaga knows her way around a jazz standard, the arrangements of these songs is bafflingly bad. The execution of them works much better on her side project, a companion album released last week called Harlequin – perhaps the one good thing to come out of this whole mess. In Harlequin, we’re treated to big orchestral versions of many of the songs in this movie, as well as a few original pieces written by Gaga. It’s a lovely album, and I was quick to purchase it on vinyl. It calls back to the work she did with Tony Bennett, and I’m thankful for that, as the songs in this actual movie sound like crap.

In sidelining the Lady Gaga character, we again focus primarily on Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck. But the problem that existed with that character in the first movie, is again a problem here. All we learned about Arthur in Joker was that people were mean to him, the system didn’t care about him and he went crazy as a result. That film had no interest in being a study of mental illness, societal decline, or anything, really. It beat you over the head repeatedly with the most bland observations about this character, often making the same point over and over again. Joker: Folie à Deux also has nothing going on underneath the exterior, and while Phoenix is again giving it his all, his performance becomes exhausting to watch. And also he’s singing now, doing his best Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia. I can’t imagine who agreed to that.

We also have the great Catherine Keener as Maryanne, Arthur’s lawyer, who is kind of like a voice of reason amongst all the madness, and she’s doing all she can with kind of a nothing character. There’s an individual scene with Steve Coogan as a reporter interviewing Arthur before his trial. We also have Brendan Gleeson as a prison guard, and Leigh Gill and Zazie Beetz reprising their roles from the previous film.

Todd Phillips seems insistent on burning this franchise to the ground, and he seems like he hates the fact that he has to make this sequel at all. Like I said, Joker (2019) was intended to be a single standalone movie and not more, but after making a billion dollars worldwide, I assume his phone was ringing off the hook. And the contempt for this material is evident in almost every frame. Phillips isn’t trying to bring new fans in – the musical sequences fall flat, Lady Gaga is sidelined in a way that almost feels cruel, and Phillips certainly isn’t trying to make comic book fans happy, because of the way certain plot developments unfold, particularly the film’s ending. This script even begins to address the problems with the first film that some viewers (me) had, and it comes close to saying something worthwhile but then it never does.

It’s important to note Folie á Deux cost $200 million to make, before any advertising costs, and having seen the movie, this is baffling. The film takes place in two locations, and the musical numbers are nothing special visually. I think we need a formal inquiry into where all that money went. Because this is undoubtedly going to be considered a financial failure for Warner Bros., and it’s going to be a stain on the resumes of Phoenix, Gaga and others. How did any studio executive agree to a $200 million budget, knowing this would be a long R-rated musical slog that would be divisive at best to viewers? Make it make sense, Hollywood!

In conclusion, I truly feel like the joke was on me for having any feelings of excitement for Joker: Folie à Deux. It’s a terrible sequel to an equally terrible film, and it’s something that should land Todd Phillips in director jail for at least awhile. There is not much going on here thematically or visually, there’s nothing to the characters, and the musical side of this is half baked and under realized. There’s something to admire in the fact that Phillips did not just make the same film over again, but almost every single idea here is a bad one, and I could not wait for it to end.