Title: Joker 2
Year: 2024
Director: Todd Phillips
Country: US
Language: English
Todd Phillips Joker (2019) was a cultural phenomenon when it was released. It was a huge hit with critics & audiences, raking in over a $1 Billion in Worldwide gross revenue. I was at Toronto Film Festival, where Joker made its North American debut, and there were entire city blocks worth of people in Joker cosplay. Such a hit meant a sequel was inevitable. Would Joker: Folie a deux live up to the hype? Nope!
Struggling with his dual identity, failed comedian Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) meets the love of his life, Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga) , while incarcerated at Arkham State Hospital.
There's a lot of discussion about how Todd Phillips went out of his way to make an anti-film; deliberately trolling the audience by making a film that is the exact opposite of their expectations. I think this is giving too much credit to the Director of Starsky & Hutch (2004). Joker 2 is awful, not because it doesn't give the audience what it wants, but because the writing is incomprehensible garbage. Harley Quinn's motivation is all over the place; plot points are introduced and abandoned at a whim; entire scenes serve no purpose but to fill time.
Joker had a lot of misses in its writing as well, such as implying that Thomas Wayne was his father, but it stole enough from Martin Scorsese to make the film as a whole work. Folie a Deux's concept has been done before, it was inspired by The Singing Detective, but Todd Phillips and co. aren't talented enough to Tarantino themselves into a good movie twice.
The only thing Joker: Folie a Deux might do well is serve as a test to weed out pretentious cinema snobs. Is your friend convinced that this film is actually a Kaufman-esque avant guard anti-cinema masterpiece? There's a bridge you may be able to sell to them!
