Todd Phillips’ new Joker sequel shouldn’t be a film. You would possibly discover that complicated. “Isn’t Joker: Folie à Deux two hours and 19 minutes lengthy?” you ask, bewildered. “Why would Todd Phillips make audiences sit in a theater for 2 hours and 19 minutes if to not watch a worthwhile film?”
It’s OK to have these questions—I’ve them, too. However Folie à Deux is a bland commercial for self-victimization, not the anguished, romantic jukebox musical its low-lit posters recommend. As an alternative, its runtime is essentially occupied by inert courtroom drama and indulgent pictures of Arthur Fleck, Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, being brutalized after which puffing out dramatic clouds of nicotine.
He’s on trial for the 5 murders he dedicated in Joker, although he’s undecided how responsible he ought to really feel. As Arthur contemplates his self-worth, he stares down soiled cops by means of half-lidded eyes and pursues the rich and petulant “Lee Quinzel” (Woman Gaga), who sings too many jazz requirements.
Although the music, simply by its absurdity, injects some verve into Phillips’ useless fish of a movie, Folie à Deux is in any other case tedious. Joker and Harley Quinn are by no means depicted because the larger-than-life, unpredictable lovers which have made them such fascinating villains for many years. As an alternative, they’re humanized past recognition, till they might be people in any film, in any time, doing something. If I needed a clean slate like that, I’d have fired up my outdated Wii and made one other Mii that appears like Hi there Kitty.