It feels like a lifetime ago that “Joker” (2019) burst onto the scene, sparking endless discourse, memes and — perhaps most importantly for Warner Bros — raking in over $1 billion worldwide. Despite its obvious status as a blockbuster comic book film, “Joker” was championed by fans as something new, a self-contained vision representing a break from the endless conveyor belt of dead-tech superhero franchises. 

However, a billion dollars is a billion dollars, and the opportunity to score another slam-dunk was simply too good to pass up. The first film had already stretched its Scorsese references and faux-gritty aesthetic to their limits. Director Todd Philips had cashed in on superficiality, and his film was summarily rewarded with Oscar glory and box office success. Although, could a sequel really justify itself beyond cynical studio demands? At last, we have our answer — and it’s not an encouraging one.

Joker the Musical?

The best that Phillips and company can offer as justification for this new outing is confusion masquerading as profundity. The French title “Folie à Deux” and the addition of fantasy musical sequences seem designed to repackage the film’s confused nature as something artful or self-reflexive.

Phillips throws in nods to classic Hollywood — characters watch Vincente Minnelli’s “The Band Wagon” (1953) and sing “That’s Entertainment!” as if invoking Minnelli’s masterful emotionality could absolve the picture of its own blandness. However, this dissonance between form and content only amplifies the film’s failure.

The musical sequences, far from enriching, act as a distancing mechanism pulling the audience further away from any meaningful engagement with the protagonists. With each set piece we are increasingly unsure about what’s going on with these characters, and Philips fails to handle this ambiguity with any grace.

Defenders might argue that these musical numbers serve a meta-narrative function, drawing attention to the characters’ obsession with media and the spectacle of entertainment. Indeed, in a culture so consumed by its screens, how else might the Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) and his equally damaged romantic partner Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) express themselves but through cinematic fantasy? The film gestures toward this critique of media-saturated reality, especially the reception of the Joker character. Although, it does so in a way that is too obvious to be insightful and too clumsy to be provocative.

Incoherent Plotline

The real issue, though, goes deeper than these surface-level gestures. The film suffers from an almost shocking inability to maintain tonal or emotional coherence. It flits between uninteresting romance, half-baked psychological drama and stylized pastiche without committing to any of these modes in a meaningful way.

Take, for instance, the courtroom scenes that dominate the second half of the film, in which our Joker stands trial for his various crimes. Here, the film awkwardly lurches between expositional dumps, bizarre fantasy sequences and an incomprehensible internal conflict about the Joker’s true nature: is he the real Arthur Fleck, or a totally different persona altogether? The film tries to milk dramatic juices out of this question but it’s handled with such ineptitude that the final conclusions fall flat.

Had “Joker: Folie à Deux” come out 50 years ago, perhaps it would’ve been a perfectly watchable 80-minute exploitation film. Instead, all we get is this bloated mess of a picture, overstuffed and undercooked, stretched to the point of incoherence.

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