It is not uncommon for creators of all sorts to become disgusted with their own most successful works. Popular musicians grow weary of playing their biggest hits for adoring fans over time (think De La Soul chanting “We hate this song” over the intro to a live performance of “Me, Myself & I” in 1996, for example), and writers both fictional (Paul Sheldon in Stephen King’s classic Misery) and actual seek an end to their most popular characters’ existences, and not necessarily a dignified one (the most obvious explanation for the ending of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal, or the entirety of his screenplay for Hannibal Rising).
Joker: Folie à Deux, the utterly joyless follow-up to Todd Phillips’s 2019 smash hit Joker, is the most egregious example I’ve ever seen of this phenomenon. It is a movie so empty, pointless and borderline unwatchable it makes the not-so-great original look like a masterpiece by comparison, while simultaneously erasing any of the genuine passion and energy that drove that picture to its surprisingly enormous success. This is simultaneously one of the worst sequels, musicals, and courtroom dramas ever made, a feat that might be impressive if it weren’t such a slog to watch.
Joker: Dropping à Deux constantly reminds viewers of better movies we could be watching (including its own predecessor, which did the same with classics like Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy), especially 2002 Best Picture winner Chicago. One can’t help but long for that far better picture during Joker’s interminable courtroom sequences, the difference being that there is genuine joy in Chicago’s musical numbers, and the songs are catchy and memorable as hell. Joker, by contrast, uses the jukebox musical crutch, rendering familiar songs boring and/or irritating as rendered by Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, the latter subduing her natural gifts in order to match the former’s less confident singing voice, leaving both their performances wanting in that regard. In terms of acting, both are solid as always, but can do no more with this dreadful material than other wasted talents such as the great Brendan Gleeson.
When the proceedings get unbearably dull, as they so often do, Phillips and company attempt to liven things up with gratuitous violence. Just as we’re dozing off during the endless courtroom fantasy number, for example, Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck brutally murders his prosecutors (including a 12-year-old Harvey Dent, a bit of fan service that only adds to the feeling of contempt for the audience with its egregious pointlessness) in the most predictable fashion possible, finishing off the judge with his own oversized gavel, because fuck subtlety. Fuck subtlety in its stupid ass.
The problem is, with so much of the supposedly tedium-breaking violence (as well as the musical numbers) occurring only in the minds of its lead characters, and the fact that there is little to no true empathy created for either character, there are no stakes. There is just no reason to care about any of this dour, mean-spirited nothingness. The violence is as pointless as everything else, never more than in its final violent act, a moment that really confirms the whole project has been a giant middle finger to its audience. I am only avoiding spoilers because this movie spoils itself.
Contempt is palpable in every frame of this misbegotten disaster, but little of it is the contempt for society in general and the trappings of celebrity in specific that Joker so ham-handed but enjoyably tackled the first time around. Instead, it is a perversely impressive commitment to contempt for its audience that this execrable sequel embraces with all its dreary heart. Phillips seems angry at the public for turning Joker into a billion-dollar, Oscar-winning hit, and no one involved seems like they wanted to make this movie or had any fun doing so, even Gaga, who was all but born to play a better version of Harley Quinn than this one.
In a way, I get it. Phoenix undoubtedly realizes he should have won his Oscar for any number of better performances in better movies (my top picks would be The Master and You Were Never Really Here, for which he wasn’t even nominated), and Phillips probably feels like his dark, Scorsese-aping vision for the first movie was misinterpreted and bastardized by legions of idiot fans, much like Fight Club before it. But, like, fuck you, dude; you’re the ones who made the movie. Don’t be mad at us for thinking a musical about Batman villains should be at least a little bit fun.
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