“Is that all there is?” Peggy Lee sang in the famous 1969 tune of the same name, one of the few American standards not to feature in Joker: Folie à Deux. It may still be what you end up whistling. Five years after the wildly popular Joker made a hoofer out of Joaquin Phoenix, the sequel is now here to keep everyone dancing.
Singing too. In the wake of that phenomenal success, it became apparent that the follow-up would be, of all things, a musical. Lady Gaga was to co-star. For director Todd Phillips, the idea was very on-brand. It could either land as creative audacity or mere giggly trolling, as if trying to give Joker’s stylised gloom the most jarring frame imaginable.
It has now been imagined. An opening pastiche Looney Tunes cartoon sets the tone for all that follows: less zany than it sounds, and still tethered to events in the first film. But where Joker flirted with clammy nihilism, the incels are at least now shaken off. The new movie is a romance, staged between Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck, the sad clown behind the Joker, and Gaga’s arsonist Harleen Quinzel, also stuck in Arkham Psychiatric Hospital. (The facility is harsh, though the movie’s own crude take on mental health may not be far from that of the guards.)
Love kindles with a blaze in a screening of Fred Astaire musical The Band Wagon. Its set-piece number “That’s Entertainment!” is revived in the new film. So are many others. The movie is stuffed with showtunes: “If My Friends Could See Me Now”, “For Once In My Life”, and more, belted out by the stars in dreamlike reveries.
In between, the plot grinds on with Arthur’s trial for crimes committed in the last film. Narratively, that is pretty much that. Phoenix hits his relevant notes, but even the soundtrack is drowned out by his face-pulling. And while Gaga works hard enough to bump up the star rating alone, the thinness of her role makes Phillips seem like the dog that caught the car. He wanted her in the movie, without a clue what to do next.
If the first Joker had a purpose beyond generating memes, it was letting Phoenix loose in a rathole New York Photoshopped from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and King of Comedy. The result won its loudest fans among people who hadn’t seen either movie. (A cynic might say any movies.) Costumes and vibes stay rooted in the same time and place. That remains the film’s grandest flight of fancy. By contrast, the characters’ inner worlds, where the songs unfold, are naggingly flat. Opinions will differ if the lack of imagination is theirs, or down to the director.
Still, enough money has been spent promoting the project to mean you may have to go into space to avoid seeing it. Your ticket will buy some clever moments. Phillips makes witty use of a supposed TV movie about Fleck’s original crime spree. (Like his own work, it proves critically divisive.) Actor Leigh Gill brings actual gravity to a scene as Arthur’s broken former pal. And the film is less dislikeable than its forebear.
It can also be deeply boring. In line with Phillips’ fondness for open questions, the point may be that we live our lives in fantasy. Or in the end, perhaps there is no point at all.
★★★☆☆
In cinemas from October 4
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