More Like Joker 2: Folie à Don’t!

I didn't like it!

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Imagine this. I’m a middle-schooler, and I’m going to my new friend Billy’s house for the first time. I’m a little nervous. It’s an unlikely friendship. Billy lives on the other side of town, and we have radically different vibes. I’m an effeminate artsy kid who writes poetry on his blog. Billy likes playing video games and saying slurs on internet forums. But we’re both friends with Stephanie, a loud theater nerd. Maybe we’ll get along! Sure, I’m worried Billy might call me the f-word, but I need to make some friends besides Stephanie (she can be a bit much), so I’m keeping an open mind. 

“Well, colleague,” I say, shortly after arriving at Billy’s house. “Shall we play a game, or perhaps imbibe some Capri-Suns?” 

“Let’s play Batman vs. Joker,” Billy offers. He has clown makeup and a clown wig and everything. I demand to be the Joker, because I want an excuse to wear a wig, an instinct I won’t examine critically for another decade or so. Billy agrees. We start playing, and we’re kind of getting into it. Actually, we’re having fun. Wow! This is fun! It’s not at all as bad as I thought it would be. I can’t wait to come home and tell my parents that, you know what? Billy is alright. 

But then, Billy’s dad shows up. And Billy’s dad is mad as hell. He marches up to Billy and starts scolding him for being a loser and a nerd and a fuck-up. Like, full-on shouting at him about how he needs to take a shower and get a job. Meanwhile, I’m standing awkwardly to the side in my clown makeup and my clown wig, feeling quite foolish for coming over in the first place, and just waiting for it to be over.

That’s what watching Joker: Folie à Deux felt like. 

Joker: Folie à Deux, starring Joaquin Phoenix and up-and-comer Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, is a spiteful film that, as far as I can tell, was created out of sheer contempt for audiences of the preceding Joker. Its main goal, besides an unwavering commitment to featuring a lit cigarette in every single shot, is to inflict punishment on the people who took the wrong message from the original. It doesn’t care about whatever collateral damage it might incur to this end, a category that includes innocent homosexuals who perceive seeing a film with Lady Gaga in it as something akin to jury duty, such as yours truly. 

I didn’t see the first Joker, so I was going in blind. What kind of freak watches a sequel without having seen the original? I guess I’m just that dark and twisted. I’m something of a weirdo. I’m crazy. I’m like a dog chasing cars. 

Well, I wasn’t totally blind (unlike Madame Web, who is). I remember the kerfuffle surrounding Joker, which, at the time in 2019, was the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever, a fact that strikes me as a bit unusual. There were news stories about concerns that the film would attract the incel crowd, and that it might inspire acts of violence. The vibe in the media was “did you hear they made a movie about blowing up movie theaters for the ‘wants to blow up a movie theater’ set?”

It would be easy to get lost in the weeds here, so I’ll be brief. The idea was that the film, about a downtrodden outcast named Arthur Fleck who finally snaps and goes on a killing spree, would resonate with Gary, the archetypical white, lonely, maladjusted misogynist with a manifesto saved on his PC that mentions “society” and “females” dozens of times. In not so many words, people argued that the movie was whispering to these individuals to go ape shit, to get their revenge, to become the Joker. 

This ended up not materializing. But the saga clearly left a mark on director Todd Phillips, who for some reason felt it was the responsibility of Joker 2 to stick it to… well, to who, exactly? Yes, the film is a middle finger to Gary, who ostensibly looks to the Joker as a kind of hero. You can only push a man so far before he snaps and puts on makeup and starts warbling show tunes! I suppose it’s also a middle finger to the journalists who drummed up anxieties over hypothetical violence. But it’s also a middle finger to audiences in general, to the people who made the original such a massive hit without actually getting it. This movie hates you for wanting to see it. 

And yet, for the first thirty minutes or so, I was really enjoying it. I’m a bit of a spiteful person myself. The concept of a director using the “fuck you” money he made off a previous film to hire Lady Gaga as part of an elaborate troll on a captive audience appeals directly to me. I have several personality disorders. But trolling should be done with a wink, with some giddy mischief, with a wicked grin. Joker 2 doesn’t have any of that. Joker 2 is like reading a mean tweet that starts off unhinged in a fun way, but by the end it’s clear that the person is genuinely mad. It’s just sort of a bummer. 

This isn’t really a review. But I paid $18 or so to sit in a ridiculously comfortable recliner and get yelled at by a movie for sins I didn’t commit, so the least I can do is wring some content out of the experience. I guess I’ll do what I usually do and summarize the film in a humorous and uncharitable way. Spoilers below for Joker: Folie à Deux. Imagine me in a deflated clown wig and splotchy clown makeup as you read the rest of this piece.

The film picks up, apparently, where Joker left off. Arthur Fleck (that’s the Joker) is rotting in Arkham, a prison in Gotham, for shooting a TV host on live television, among other murderous crimes. He’s emaciated and carrying a tub of his own piss, so he’s down pretty bad. Amidst the typical ruckus of a movie prison, the guards are talk-singing “Oh When the Saints Go Marching In,” a song this movie is obsessed with. It pops up so many times, and I’m not sure why, other than that a “cool movie” is supposed to have a recurring song from the jukebox era, like Inception had “Ain’t that a Kick in the Head,” I guess. I got pretty sick of it. 

For good behavior, our heavily medicated anti-hero is allowed the privilege of joining the psych ward’s Glee Project, where he meets Lee Quinzel (that’s Lady Gaga), a woman who, unbeknownst to Arthur, checked herself into the asylum with the specific intention of meeting him. Not sure how she figured this would work, considering she’s already in the singing group when Arthur first becomes aware that it even exists, and he’s in prison, not the psych ward, but whatever. The two immediately hit it off. Lee shares that she’s something of an arsonist, and Arthur is like, “damn, you are one interesting chica.” Love is in the air. 

Meanwhile, Arthur has become a pop culture icon since doing a televised murder, because of the “TV documentary” about him (that’s Joker). He now has throngs of fans who dress up in his likeness and, I assume, have incredibly off-putting Tinder bios. They’re all riled up because Arthur’s trial is set to be underway. His defense lawyer, played by Catherine Keener, has a unique strategy: She’s going to make the case that it wasn’t Arthur who killed those people, but his persona, the Joker. 

The entire film takes place in the prison and in the courtroom. Those are the only two locations. So if you enjoy being in either a jail or a courtroom, I have just the movie for you. Oh, right, the movie is also a musical, kind of. Joaquin Phoenix can’t really sing, a logistical hurdle that the film solves by not solving it. He meanders into shaky mumble-humming a lot. Most of the songs are covers. Yes, it’s a jukebox musical. This doesn’t matter terribly much. The movie would be the same movie with or without the caterwauling. 

At this point, about a third of the way in, I believed this was going to be a failed project with poor pacing that occasionally limped into campy musical numbers with Lady Gaga. I was really vibing with that. I famously enjoy failed projects. But the thing is, Joker 2 isn’t a failed project. It’s actually a successful project in as much as it has a goal and executes on it. The goal is to be abrasive, to make you feel bad for expecting this poor, unwell fellow to be the Joker, because, you guys, the Joker is bad. Did you know that the Joker is bad? That he kills people? Did you know that people die when they’re killed? What is wrong with you? What if someone came up and killed you? You’d probably sue. 

The defense attorney’s premise is meant to be a reflection of how we, people who paid money to see a film, approach Joker’s crimes. Poor Arthur Fleck was traumatized, bullied, and abused. He had no choice but to escape into an iconic alternate persona that we, in turn, had no choice but to stan! Lee Quinzel’s character is yet another mirror held up to us, the wretched masses. She encourages Arthur to drop his defense attorney, and in turn, his one shot at avoiding the death penalty, and instead embrace being the Joker, because the Joker turns her on. Literally, she won’t have sex with him unless he lets her meticulously apply Joker X Haus Labs Collab makeup to his face. She sneaks into solitary confinement to have sex with him. I don’t know. 

Oh, and Harvey Dent is the prosecutor. Just a fact.

Basically, being a fan of the Joker is wrong, and this movie exists to lecture you about how it’s wrong, in addition to doing karaoke without you, but well within earshot. There are a couple of extended musical sequences that riff on The Sonny & Cher Show that don’t interact much with the rest of the movie, which, after the first hour or so, mostly concerns itself with torturing Arthur and blaming you for it. It’s heavily implied that the guards violate him. It turns out that Lee lied about everything to him in a desperate attempt to get closer to the Joker, the swaggering, lawless murderer that, at the end of the day, Arthur Fleck simply isn’t. Arthur Fleck is nothing. It’s right there in the name. Fleck. 

Arthur confesses as much in the courtroom, telling the whole world that there is no Joker. He’s but a man who killed some people, and wishes he hadn’t. Lee loses her hardon immediately and most of his toxic fanbase unfollows. The jury finds him guilty, but, as they’re reading the verdict, the courthouse explodes, a moment that feels very “isn’t this what you wanted, you sick fucks?” 

Arthur staggers through the wreckage, passing a shell-shocked Harvey Dent who for some goddamn reason is not sporting a massive burn on half of his face, because this movie hates fun, and is pursued by one of his diehards dressed as the Joker who wants to whisk him away to safety. It’s a very on-the-nose visual, a traumatized Arthur Fleck being hounded by a crazy fan in a clown outfit. That’s us. We’re the crazy fan in the clown outfit. 

The fan shoves Arthur into a cab until Arthur runs out of it and finds Lee sitting on the iconic stairs from Joker, where she breaks up with him for not being the Joker, and then he’s recaptured, and then he’s shanked to death in prison by some guy we don’t know who laughs maniacally and gives himself Heath-Ledger scars as Arthur bleeds out, bleeding because he is but flesh and bone, a mere man. And t’was it not you and I that shanked him? 

Well, no. I didn’t. It was some random inmate without a backstory that did that. I’m going to stand up for myself a bit here and say I had nothing to do with anything I just saw on the screen. I didn’t even see Joker. I’m being yelled at by a movie that’s not even yelling at me, specifically. So, what was the point?

I guess nihilism is the point. The movie ends with a dying Arthur, crumpled on the floor, as a song informs us, “that’s life!” And, sure, I guess that’s life: You show up, get excited to see Lady Gaga, encounter some clowns, smoke some cigs, and then you die. But is there no fun? No joy? No Carly Rae Jepsen cover for the gays? Is it all just punishment? Or is query naive? 

Maybe I’d be singing a different tune if I thought that Joker had something to be bitter about. But does it? It made so much money. It won awards. It reached audiences well beyond internet misogynists busy measuring the metopic ridges of their skulls or whatever and coastal journalists writing articles about how manspreading on the subway is like doing a Manifest Destiny. As it stands, the final product just feels petulant and crass. A waste of our time, and of Lady Gaga. I guess that’s the whole point. If so, good job! 

Final verdict: It’s no Megalopolis. 

John Paul