For all the things that proverbially grind my gears, none get me quite as cranky as when people offer opinions, often negative ones, on things they’ve never seen. Log lines and trailers are designed to provoke interest, not prejudgement. If they’re not impactful enough to get you into a theatre or onto a couch to actually give something a chance, they’re failures, and you can certainly offer your thoughts on them. But please don’t insult your own intelligence, let alone mine, by trying to pass judgement on an entire body of work.
But I do feel compelled to pass along the virtually ubiquitous onslaught of reviews from those who have seen JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX that have accompanied an actually encouraging early box office return. DEADLINE’s Anthony D’Alessandro’s blurb from early yesterday morning was the first trickle of news about the much anticipated sequel to the billion-dollar global hit from 2019 that opened in the US and UK yesterday:
Warner Bros’ Todd Phillips directed sequel Joker: Folie à Deux earned $7M in previews last night that began at 3PM, a number that indicates that the $190M+ movie could possibly get to a $50M opening, particularly when comped against such movies that exceeded that threshold in their starts, Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning ($7M), No Time to Die ($6.3M) and John Wick: Chapter 3: Parabellum ($5.9M).
That was apparently the last positive news that would drop as the day wore on, as professional reviewers and laypeople began to weigh on on what they saw–at least the ones that have so far figured out exactly what the heck what they saw might have been.
Take THE VERGE’s Charles Pulliam-Moore:
Despite its lack of a Batman, the public’s exhaustion with comic book movies, and a story that often felt overly imitative of Martin Scorsese’s work, Todd Phillips’ 2019 Joker was a certified hit whose box office success (and two Oscar wins) all but ensured that there would be a sequel. Folie à Deux, Phillips’ new musical Joker follow-up, feels like it knows exactly how ready people were to buy into the first film’s dark power fantasy. Folie à Deux remembers the way theatergoers could see Joker’s Arthur Fleck as a disaffected victim of the system driven to murder by a deeply broken society.
But rather than trying to find more meaning in the Joker’s madness, Folie à Deux brings the metaphorical house lights up to take a much more negatively critical look at its central anti-villain and the culture of hero worship. It’s a solid enough pitch that could have made for an interesting comic series. But as a movie, Folie à Deux is an off-key mess that barely manages to express its handful of good ideas.
Or MASHABLE’s Kristy Pushko:
When critics called for superhero movies to do something different, we didn’t mean Joker: Folie à Deux.
Admittedly, Phillips earned goodwill — even from those of us who rolled our eyes at Phillips’ poor imitation of Taxi Driver meets The King of Comedy — were intrigued when he cast pop goddess Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn. But be warned, Little Monsters: Joker: Folie à Deux will not satisfy your desire to see Gaga go hard. Harley Quinn fans will likewise be disappointed, as the character who has been re-imagined in a variety of fresh and fun ways across movies, TV, and video games never gets her moment in the spotlight. Likewise, I suspect Batman fans — specifically those who adored Christopher Nolan’s take on the Gotham rogues’ gallery — will groan over Phillips’ casual skewing of that canon. Not even musical fans will be entertained by Joker: Folie à Deux, because while Phillips can drop a reference, he fails to make any of these intriguing elements his own.
Even the more reserved folks on the other side of the pond were negative, as recapped by MAILONLINE’s Lily Jobson:
Joker: Folie À Deux has been branded the ‘most disappointing follow-up to the Oscar-winning movie’ by critics, as they cast doubt on Lady Gaga’s ‘thin’ role in the film following its release on Friday.
The ‘bleak’ sequel, has also received a tepid reception from fans, with some claiming Lady Gaga‘s career could be at risk.
While the same director Todd Phillips was back in the hot seat, critics have said the sequel is just a ‘repeat’ of the first hit but with an added musical twist.
Phillips did his best to spin his vision, which the more empathetic ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY’s Joey Nolfi shared:
“He realized that everything is so corrupt, it’s never going to change, and the only way to fix it is to burn it all down,” director Todd Phillips tells Entertainment Weekly when asked about Arthur’s decision to confess his sins to the jury near the end of Folie à Deux. “When those guards kill that kid in the [hospital] he realizes that dressing up in makeup, putting on this thing, it’s not changing anything. In some ways, he’s accepted the fact that he’s always been Arthur Fleck; he’s never been this thing that’s been put upon him, this idea that Gotham people put on him, that he represents. He’s an unwitting icon. This thing was placed on him, and he doesn’t want to live as a fake anymore — he wants to be who he is.”
Phillips admits that “the sad thing is, he’s Arthur, and nobody cares about Arthur,” pointing out that Gaga’s Lee “never says ‘Arthur'” in the film until she leaves him on the same steps he danced atop in the original movie. “[She’s] realizing, I’m on a whole other trip, man, you can’t be what I wanted you to be,” he explains. Phillips also confirms that, while boasting a dreamlike quality, the final exchange between Lee and Arthur is “actually, really happening” and isn’t an imagined interaction like Arthur’s fake romance with Sophie (Zazie Beetz) in the prior installment.
But even that insight from an artiste hoping to appeal to cinemaphiles may not be enough to overcome the kind of bottom line vox populi which D’Alessandro also reported on:
What’s not funny is the Comscore/Screen Engine PostTrak audience exits for Joker 2 …While many knew this Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga combo would be challenged in the fact that it was a musical, the fanboys full out rejected the sequel last night on PostTrak with a 1/2 star and 40% positive. Holy guacamole, Batman. Did the Megalopolis cynics show up last night? Because that’s the same Thursday night grade (actually 45% positive) that the Francis Ford Coppola directed $120M dystopian epic received a week ago before inching up to one star on PostTrak. Or, wait, did PostTrak switch up the reports?
A very low 24% say they’ll definitely recommend Joker 2 to their friends. God knows what this means for Joker 2‘s stability throughout the weekend. RT audience score for Joker 2 is also in the gutter at 37% with critical reviews plummeting from 62% fresh to 39% Rotten.
The last time I saw such a preponderance of negative reaction for something that attempted to put a musical overlay on a story of justice was Steven Bochco’s grand experiment COP ROCK, foisted on ABC’s prime-time schedule in 1990 as part of a multi-show commitment that the network made with him that yours truly worked diligently on to ensure he would have the gravitas to try. And in the wake of modest hits like HOOPERMAN and DOOGIE HOWSER, M.D., especially when the penalty payments would have been harsh, he indeed made 11 hours that got the reaction that Wikipedia recounts:
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds an approval rating of 53% based on 17 reviews, with an average rating of 5.33/10. The website’s critical consensus states, “Cop Rock‘s ambition to innovate the police procedural is admirable, but the contrast of grit and glam proves too jarring with unmemorable music throwing the series’ more promising dramatic beats askew. The show was a critical and commercial failure and was canceled by ABC after 11 episodes.[25] The combination of a fusion of musical performances with serious police drama and dark humor with its high-powered production talent, made it infamous as one of the biggest television failures of the 1990s.[26][27] TV Guide Magazine ranked it #8 on its List of the 50 Worst TV Shows of All Time list in 2002[28] and dubbed it “the single most bizarre TV musical of all time”.[29]
So I honestly consider it a public service of sorts to share what else Nolfi did in his supportive piece, with the necessary SPOILER ALERT ahead of it:
Back at the hospital, after police re-capture Arthur, another inmate approaches him to tell him a joke with similar structure to the one he told Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) before shooting him in the first film. The punchline, though, is a knife to the stomach, and Arthur bleeds to death. But behind him, the true Joker is revealed, as the young man cuts a bloody grin into his cheeks. Yes, this means Arthur was never really Joker in the first place; he merely served as the inspiration for the man who’d become Joker after him.
As Lady Gaga reminds us by crooning somber lyrics over the final frame of the Joker sequel, which sees Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) dying in a pool of his own blood following a brutal stabbing from a fellow Arkham State Hospital inmate, “that’s life” for a man whose misdeeds range from starting a class war in Gotham City to shooting a TV host in the head on a live broadcast. Outside of virtually confirming that Arthur won’t return to terrorize Gotham again, the Joker: Folie à Deux ending also sums up the two-film series’ central thesis: Arthur is no hero, villain, god, or even an anti-hero. He’s nothing more than a lonely man, cast out by his family and the world. His evil-doing becomes his untimely undoing and merely bridges gaps to allow other, more powerful forces of change (for better or worse) to rise around him.
So at least there is a shred of possibility that a JOKER MENAGE A TROIS or something to that effect might someday be produced, although not at the scale that this was. Phillips, Phoenix and Gaga, not to mention music rights, aren’t cheap–the tab on this is reportedly $190M. All of a sudden, that $50M projection which D’Alessandro shared doesn’t look all that healthy, particularly for IP partners as frugal as Warner Brothers and Village Roadshow Pictures. The latter announced eight layoffs earlier this week, as THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s Erik Hayden wrote. Imagine how many more heads might have rolled if they had actually been part of this.
With my personal budget and time options limited, I’ve decided I’m gonna pass on seeing FOLIE A DEUX in a theatre and therefore decline to offer my own review; besides, one never knows who one might run into. In my case, there might be a few Little Monsters who could be triggered in a manner a la Arthur Fleck.
But now that you know how this unfolds and concludes, you can make your own decisions. As they say in another foreign language, caveat emptor.
Until next time…