“Joker: Folie à Deux” review: Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix make a bad film shine

At the time Joker: Folie à Deux Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) stumbles from musical to half-baked courtroom drama and has reappeared as the titular villain. Joker sits clown-faced before the jury, preparing his closing statements after being charged with the murders of five people in the first film – including the shooting of late-night host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro) on prime-time television. The presiding judge, annoyed by all the machinations, reminds: “This is not a comedy club. You’re not on stage.” The sad and menacing Joker tilts his head and stares directly into the nearest camera. We watch as his sad saying is broadcast on tube televisions across Gotham.

This moment lies at the gnawed core of Slide for twodirector Todd Phillips’ sequel to his billion-dollar DC Comics origin story, joker. This film chronicled the fall of Arthur Fleck – abused clown, aspiring stand-up stalker – and the rise of a murderous anti-hero. In the second and final part of Phillips, the imprisoned, skinny Arthur is revived when he meets Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, aka Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga), a fellow counselor at Arkham Asylum. Their real-life romance is pathetic and hopeless, but in Arthur’s daydreams the deranged prisoner soulmates sing, dance, and cause hell with the Old Hollywood feel of a Gene Kelly movie.

“There is an idea of ​​corruption underneath. … From the prison system to the justice system to the idea of ​​entertainment,” Phillips told reporters following Folie à Deux premiered at the Venice Film Festival last month. “At least in the States, it’s all entertainment, you know? A court case could be entertainment, and a presidential election could be entertainment. So if that’s true, what? Is Entertainment?” Phillips doesn’t reach the desired depths Slide for twoas it feels like he and writing partner Scott Silver were trying to expand the setup of “That’s Entertainment,” the hit from Vincente Minnelli’s 1953 Fred Astaire musical The band wagoninto a feature film. The imagination – that “the world is a stage”, that murders, missteps and affairs are everything theater– grows thin in the hands of Phillips and Silvers.

“That’s Entertainment” is one of several oldies and show tunes that Gaga and Phoenix sing throughout the film, both in Technicolor reverie and quietly unhinged Mots d’amour. When Arthur sees Lee, she is singing “Can the Circle Be Unbroken” in a music therapy group at Arkham Asylum; the guards and prisoners whistle and shout the recurring motif “When the Saints Go Marching In”; When Lee meets Arthur in person, he squeals a muffled verse of Judy Garland’s “Get Happy.” A loud “Huh?!” rang as the joker The sequel was announced as a musical, but the song and dance sequences are the only functioning parts of the film. (Recent claims from Phillips and its stars that the film is “not a musical” are simply absurd.) I would applaud the classic songbook and performances by Phoenix and Gaga before Phillips or Silver made any noise. Fade to a stinking script. But you can’t blind a bastard.