“The writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”
— Dr. Seuss
I fucking hate this film.
I just knew Joker: Folie à Deux was going to bomb hard, right when they announced it was a musical. Yet, I loved the first film so much, and it is the only one that has made me cry in the cinema. So, I still cared enough to give the sequel a chance.
But for the entire two and a half hours, I was thinking to myself, why the actual fuck is this a musical? What the fuck am I even watching?
Overall, I actually think the story is barely passable. But the fact that it is a musical — and not even a good one — just makes everything else about it a hundred-fold worse than they already are.
During the musical scenes, everyone in the nearly empty cinema, including myself, was just playing with their phones. Ironically, there’s also a later part in the film where Arthur tells Harley (Lee? Harleen? — whatever the fuck), “Don’t sing. Just talk, please.” — thanks for finally saying what everyone is thinking.
After the release of the first film, which grossed over a billion US dollars worldwide, the director and actors mentioned numerous times that it was meant to be a standalone project, and that they had no plans for a sequel — until a sequel was eventually announced — and as a musical.
It’s hard to really pin down Joker: Folie à Deux‘s reason for existing. It is comparable to The Godfather: Part III, particularly in the sense that it is an unnecessary sequel to a masterpiece. It has no substantial purpose, and it comes across as choppy and soulless. It’s as if the writers just put out whatever was at the top of their heads, just so that a sequel existed.
Much of the film simply recaps the events of what has already happened in the first film — and the filler musical scenes failingly attempt to distract you from this fact.
Also, the marketing, and even the title of the film, are pretty misleading. The film is promoted as a Joker and Harley story, when Harley makes up just a tiny fragment of it.
Most disappointingly, Joker: Folie à Deux takes its fuckiness up a notch by punishing the audience for loving and resonating with the first film. Besides the obviously horrendous and out-of-place musical direction, this is the reason why.
I could see that the film does have an underlying message, to some extent. It confirms a popular Internet theory that Arthur isn’t meant to be the true Joker, because he isn’t a psychopath, but simply a man pushed to his limits. We see that he craves unconditional love and acceptance for who he is as a mentally-ill individual. And apparently, being the Joker does not grant him that.
But with this premise, it undoes what the first film thematically stood for, in how it commented on the consequences of neglecting society’s vulnerable mentally-ill communities. The first film gave a much-needed insight into this disenfranchised community’s day-to-day life of being misjudged and misunderstood, hence why it was so loved.
The sequel stupidly takes away this perspective that it fought hard to provide. It’s like intimately pouring your heart out to someone, and then telling them that you didn’t mean a single word you said.
Joker: Folie à Deux also tears down Arthur’s character development that we got to see in the first film. After all, we did see how being the Joker led him to be radically self-accepting and self-loving. We did see Arthur breaking into laughter, not as a painful condition, but because he was finally, truly happy. The sequel just cheapens this hard-earned development by going back on the first film’s word.
I’m left wondering what everyone involved was thinking when they made Joker: Folie à Deux. Most likely the director was just so up in his own ass after the first film’s success, that he lost touch with his common sense.
Saying this film is like an existential crisis would be an insult to existential crises.
On some level, it seems like Joker: Folie à Deux tries to make Hollywood happy, by toning itself down and conforming to the criticism of the first film, in that it was feared it might incite a violent movement.
Yet, at the same time, it also seems like it is deliberately designed to piss everybody off — not just Hollywood for their greed, not just the fans of the first film for loving it the way they did, but everybody. Most of all, it’s angry at itself for existing.
If I’m being honest, though, I’ve got to say that I do admire the film’s gumption to be different, and to take the unconventional route. But this doesn’t change the fact that the film is a giant, bloated mess.
Don’t waste two and a half hours of your life watching Joker: Folie à Deux. You’d have more fun watching paint dry.
Izzat Zailan 