Jok­er: Folie à Deux – first-look review

Todd Phillips is quite insis­tent that Jok­er: Folie à Deux is not a musi­cal. First at Cin­ema­Con, then in an inter­view with Vari­ety, the direc­tor explained, ​“Most of the music in the movie is real­ly just dia­logue. It’s just Arthur not hav­ing the words to say what he wants to say, so he sings them instead.” Per­haps Phillips is being obtuse, or maybe he tru­ly believes he’s cre­at­ed some­thing tru­ly cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly pro­found rather than a bas­tard ver­sion of The Band Wag­on, but with no less than 12 musi­cal num­bers (includ­ing an orig­i­nal song that doesn’t exact­ly set the screen on fire) plus Phoenix soft-shoe­ing his way through pro­ceed­ings, let’s call a spade a spade: it’s a bloody musical.

In its open­ing scene, the film at least shows a small spark of promise, pay­ing homage to Looney Tunes with a Jok­er car­toon (one can’t help but think Warn­er Broth­ers are real­ly miss­ing a trick keep­ing Coy­ote Vs Acme in the vault) enti­tled ​‘Me and My Shad­ow’. But soon the wacky, eye-pop­ping vio­lence gives way to the grimy envi­rons of Arkham Asy­lum, where Arthur ​“Jok­er” Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is await­ing tri­al for the mur­der of five peo­ple includ­ing talk show host Mur­ray Franklin.

He’s become a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure since his incar­cer­a­tion, though is most­ly on good terms with the inmates and guards at Arkham. Cor­rec­tions offi­cer Jack­ie (Bren­dan Glee­son) decides to pull a few strings to get Fleck into a music class over in a neigh­bour­ing cell­block, where he meets fel­low patient Harleen ​“Lee” Quinzel (Lady Gaga) who tells him she’s a huge fan and was insti­tu­tion­alised for set­ting her par­ents’ apart­ment build­ing on fire. Instant­ly, adher­ing to the dream log­ic of musi­cals, the pair fall mad­ly in love.

Mean­while, new boy won­der Dis­trict Attor­ney Har­vey Dent (Har­ry Lawtey, sad­ly with­out much to do) announces his inten­tion to pur­sue the death penal­ty for Fleck, mak­ing an exam­ple of him in a law­less Gotham City. Fleck’s new­ly-appoint­ed lawyer Maryanne Stew­art (Cather­ine Keen­er, look­ing bored) advis­es Arthur to pur­sue the insan­i­ty defense and dis­tance him­self from the ​“Jok­er” per­sona. Arthur seems fair­ly indif­fer­ent; he’s most­ly inter­est­ed in a pret­ty girl final­ly show­ing an inter­est in him. (NB: It’s unclear why Phillips con­tin­ues to both­er bring­ing in oth­er ele­ments of DC lore giv­en how lit­tle inter­est he has in either adher­ing to or sub­vert­ing the source mate­r­i­al – name recog­ni­tion and fan ser­vice, presumably.)

Through a series of on-the-nose musi­cal sequences – some with sim­ple set-ups, such as the prison rec room and some more elab­o­rate, such as ​‘The Jok­er & Harley Show’ set – Arthur and Lee croon away, check­ing off a laun­dry list of clas­sics includ­ing ​‘Gonna Build A Moun­tain’, ​‘That’s Enter­tain­ment’, ​‘I’ve Got the World on a String’, ​‘If My Friends Could See Me Now’, ​‘For Once In My Life’ and ‘(They Long To Be) Close To You’. Gaga sounds great (because she is Lady Gaga) but Phoenix singing as Fleck is flat and mourn­ful, which does become grat­ing after a while, even if tech­ni­cal­ly in character.

The most egre­gious inclu­sion on the juke­box sound­track is a cov­er of Daniel Johnston’s sub­lime ​‘True Love Will Find You in the End’, sung by Phoenix over the cred­its. Not only does it feel anachro­nis­tic in a film set in 1981 and pre­dom­i­nant­ly pop­u­lat­ed by songs of the ​’50s and ​’60s, but opt­ing to include a song famous­ly writ­ten by a man who strug­gled his whole life with bipo­lar dis­or­der in a film that end­less­ly links men­tal ill­ness with vio­lent intent and creepi­ness indi­cates the taste lev­el Phillips oper­ates at.

Gaga’s much-fêt­ed fol­low-up to her impres­sive turns in A Star is Born and House of Guc­ci is a let-down through no fault of her own – the char­ac­ter is hope­less­ly under­writ­ten, and her musi­cal clas­sics were bet­ter exe­cut­ed in her 2014 album with Tony Ben­nett, ​‘Cheek to Cheek’. Although her take on Harley Quinn is bare­ly recog­nis­able from the pop­u­lar depic­tions of her as a gum-chew­ing, fast-talk­ing dia­mond in the rough, there isn’t any attempt made to replace these char­ac­ter­is­tics with any­thing new or inter­est­ing. Lee’s role in the nar­ra­tive is pure­ly to encour­age Arthur to embrace his ​“Jok­er” per­sona; she exists pure­ly to be obsessed with Jok­er, which has always been the least inter­est­ing aspect of Harley Quinn’s sto­ry despite it being her ini­tial purpose.

With Lee’s encour­age­ment, Arthur decides to rep­re­sent him­self at tri­al, turn­ing the court­room into a three-ring cir­cus. This is where Phoenix seems to come alive; he is a bet­ter clown than he is a cow­ard, but the film focus­es much more on the drab, dis­turbed Arthur Fleck side, who dis­plays no char­ac­ter evo­lu­tion from the low-rent Rupert Pup­kin of the orig­i­nal, lin­ger­ing again on Phoenix’s rail-thin physique and smeared make-up like there wasn’t enough of that the first time.

As Phillips cribbed mer­ci­less­ly from Mar­tin Scorsese’s Taxi Dri­ver and The King of Com­e­dy in Jok­er, here he’s more than hap­py to let the musi­cal tal­ent of a bygone era replace com­pelling sto­ry beats or char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, and despite occa­sion­al fun flour­ish­es (the car­toon open­er, a tele­vi­sion dream sequence motif, a prison escape song and dance) the raz­zle daz­zle can’t com­pen­sate for a paper-thin premise and how supreme­ly pleased with him­self Phillips is for get­ting $200 mil­lion to make this ghast­ly hack job.

To this end, the third act is where Phillips and co-writer Scott Sil­ver real­ly fum­ble, cre­at­ing an about-face for Arthur that comes out of nowhere and opt­ing to end the film on a note so laugh­ably cliché it evokes the Pag­gli­ac­ci joke made famous by Alan Moore’s Watch­men. Per­haps this is the great prob­lem with Jok­er, and now its sequel: Phillips con­tin­u­al­ly, lib­er­al­ly bor­rows from much bet­ter works, and the result is now a five-hour opus with­out an orig­i­nal thought present.

It begs the ques­tion, why is Phillips so reluc­tant to embrace that the film is a musi­cal? Why not add a lit­tle more colour, some flour­ish to the pro­duc­tion design and cre­ate a real­ly fucked up fan­ta­sia, instead of the grim­dark karaōke ses­sion Jok­er: Folie à Deux turns out to be? Is he con­cerned about alien­at­ing the legions of stans who made the first film a bil­lion-dol­lar box office smash, or just cre­ative­ly incu­ri­ous? What­ev­er the answer, this is a film of half-mea­sures, lack­ing ambi­tion in a way that is at least mild­ly more enter­tain­ing than its pre­de­ces­sor, but that’s down to the plea­sures of songs writ­ten half a cen­tu­ry ago rather than any tal­ent Phillips has to offer as a film­mak­er. Send in the clowns indeed.