Todd Phillips

Joker: Folie à Deux is the sequel to Joker (2019), and you have to admire Todd Phillips for returning with a jukebox musical, co-starring Lady Gaga, and not giving fans what they expected – or wanted. (There were quite a few walkouts where I saw it.) It feels like a film that hates its audience. And itself But it’s not what anyone else wanted, either. It’s so inert and pointless that if staying the course isn’t the issue it’s only because staying awake is. I don’t blame Joaquin Phoenix; no one has worked harder at trying to sing since Pierce Brosnan in Mamma Mia!. He deserves some recognition for that – although whether acting as if you are in tune is enough to secure a second Oscar, I can’t say.

To nobody’s very great surprise, the much-anticipated, very expensive Joker sequel, the pretentiously entitled Folie à Deux, has flopped, and then some. The original film opened to a staggering $96 million on its opening weekend in 2019, and went on to earn more than a billion dollars worldwide, eventually winning an Oscar for its lead Joaquin Phoenix. It was that rare movie that appealed as much to cineastes and critics as it did to the Saturday-night popcorn crowd. Never mind that its director Todd Phillips ripped off Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver so much that it was virtually actionable; it was heralded as a vital, incendiary piece of cinema. Its sequel has not been.

If you’re looking for answers as to why Joker, the Todd Phillips-helmed, gritty comic book Scorsese knock-off, garnered 11 Oscar nominations on top of being the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time, then buddy, this isn’t the piece for you. I don’t have an explanation. Joker is not a ruckus Marvel CGI theme ride. It’s an excruciating anxiety-inducing and unforgiving character study, a very good one along the lines of older cult callings like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.