Joker: Folie A Deux Review - Joker Fans, Put Up A Frowning Face

RATING - ⭐ ⭐ 2/5*

Joker: Folie A Deux Review Movie Talkies :

After the blockbuster success of Joker (2019), Todd Phillips is back with a direct sequel, Joker: Folie A Deux. This time, the joker is not alone. Arthur Fleck is not alone anymore. He has found someone to love, and he doesn't want to die. Lee, aka Harley Quinn, completes him; she "gets" him. "She's really something," says Arthur, and why not because she's the only one who understands him, saying, "He is not sick. He is perfect. Together, we are gonna build a mountain from a little hill." Now back to Joker's climax and its psychologically disturbing characteristics, I asked myself, "Did such a dark and intense story deserve a follow-up like this, I mean, the one filled with love, courtroom drama, and musicals?" My heart said, "Maybe yes," but my brain said, "Maybe No!" 

The film begins with mentally disturbed and nihilist Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) in jail, with his inner bones clearly showing up touching his external skin. This jail life was worse than the world outside—maybe that's what they wanted to portray from Arthur's point of view. He sees Lee (Lady Gaga) in a music room, and they create an instant attraction towards each other. Meanwhile, Fleck is going through medication and counseling, and his lawyer, Ms. Stewart (Catherine Keener), is trying to prove that he suffered through split personality disorder at the night of the crime. Lee is freed, and she goes on to give interviews about Fleck being a "perfect" guy to live in society, and then the trial begins with Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) fighting the case as an assistant district attorney. Will Arthur win the case? That's what the film is all about in the second half.

Frankly, I believe, the story of The Joker should have never become a love story or a courtroom drama, and here it becomes both. That wasn't sensible at all. Yes, it doesn't make sense to see a criminal who killed a person on a live show and five other people, trying to prove that it wasn't him after all. Even a medical term like personality disorder can't be an excuse in this case, as it was in Anniyan (2005). Moreover, seeing a morally disturbed and criminally advanced Joker as a puppet and a silent bully of the class doesn't do justice to the image people have in mind. In the pre-climax scene, Joker sees a complete shift in his own mindset just after a sexual abuse by the guard. Similarly, Quinn's obsession for the Joker, having a baby, and then abandoning him all happen so fast that you don't see them as concrete reasons to carry the story. In short, it's a "love got him down" kind of scenario, which has been in Hollywood since the 1930s in many gangster dramas, but instead of a femme fatale touch, Joker 2 is driven by guilty consciousness, dark blue nihilism, and personality conflicts. I still don't understand, "Why would Arthur even kiss his lawyer twice?" Most of the musical numbers and crazy scenes I imagined from the trailer, turned out to be dream sequences, and a few were not there at all. Too much disappointment to Kitty!

Performance-wise, it was a good show. Joaquin Phoenix stunned us all with his act in Joker, and he did it again in Joker 2. It's just that the character has no graph and no soul this time, so it feels dry. The blood, the liquidated feel of that anger—everything was missing. Lady Gaga surprises as Harley Quinn—not very much to what we expected from the promos. She was looking promising from the pre-release movie clips already, and she delivers. A no-sorry female antagonist who doesn't even care about her boyfriend who has finally turned yellow—oh yes, we don't see such ladies in our movies often. Brendan Gleeson is that brutal guard in the jail, and be is awesome. Catherine Keener as a lawyer, Zazie Beetz as Sophie (a cameo), and Harry Lawtey as Dent, all have done fine in those small roles. Steve Coogan and dwarfy Leigh Gill add good support.

Why would anyone want to make a Joker's sequel a musical? I don't understand. Joker: Folie A Deux's musical numbers didn't entertain me much the way that one scene from The Band Wagon (1953) did. Gaga singing the same lines or any other song would get my thumbs up any other day, but not today. The cinematography by Lawrence Sher was impressive. That smile with lipstick on a mirror and the top view of the four different color umbrellas taking Arthur in jail or all those dreaming musical sequences—Sher has done brilliant camerawork. Joker was conceived as a standalone film, and Joker 2 literally ends the saga—too quickly! The screenplay is boring and slow, which makes you feel sleepy (believe me, I felt so). The production design was fine, and the sound was well mixed, but nothing noticeable. I can't even imagine that Todd Phillips directed a "banger" like "Joker," and now he is the same person who directed a "blunder" like Joker: Folie à Deux. It's just not acceptable. He hasn't just disappointed the fans with this sequel but also destroyed the image of Joker created by Phoenix and himself only. Can't believe how someone can really make a boring and meaningless sequel like this to a modern classic like Joker (2019). I wish it wasn't "true," and I could forget it as a "fantasy."

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