JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
Theatrical Release: Oct. 4, 2024
Home Media Release: Digital – Oct. 29, 2024; Physical Media – Dec. 17, 2024
Streaming Release: Max – Dec. 13, 2024
From acclaimed writer/director/producer Todd Phillips comes Joker: Folie À Deux, the much-anticipated follow-up to 2019’s Academy Award-winning Joker, which earned more than $1 billion at the global box office and remains the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. The new film stars Joaquin Phoenix once again in his Oscar-winning dual role as Arthur Fleck/Joker, opposite Oscar winner Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born).
Joker: Folie À Deux finds Arthur Fleck institutionalized at Arkham awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only stumbles upon true love, but also finds the music that’s always been inside him.
The film also stars Oscar nominees Brendan Gleeson (The Banshees of Inisherin) and Catherine Keener (Get Out, Capote), alongside Zazie Beetz, reprising her role from Joker.
Phillips, who was nominated for Oscars for directing, writing and producing Joker, directed Joker: Folie À Deux from a screenplay by fellow Oscar nominee Scott Silver & Phillips, based on characters from DC. The film was produced by Phillips, Oscar nominee Emma Tillinger Koskoff and Joseph Garner. Lady Gaga served as music consultant. The film’s executive producers are Michael E. Uslan, Georgia Kacandes, Silver, Mark Friedberg and Jason Ruder.
Working with Phillips behind the camera are his team from Joker, including Oscar-nominated director of photography Lawrence Sher, production designer Mark Friedberg, Oscar-nominated editor Jeff Groth, and composer Hildur Guđnadóttir, who won the Oscar for her work on the first film. New to the team is Oscar-nominated costume designer Arianne Phillips (Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood, Don’t Worry Darling). Ruder is the film’s executive music producer and the music supervisors are Randall Poster and George Drakoulias. Casting is by Francine Maisler (the Dune films, Challengers).
Warner Bros. Pictures Presents A Joint Effort Production, A Film by Todd Phillips, Joker: Folie À Deux. The film will be released worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, and will be only in theaters nationwide on October 4, 2024, and beginning internationally on October 2, 2024.
By James Harvey
Despite some admirable acting efforts, and even some eye-catching directing on occasion, Joker: Folie À Deux is nothing more than a frustrating bore that seems to actively despise its own existence. Lacking in any real redeeming qualities, and the furthest thing from crowd-pleasing, Joker: Folie À Deux is a dismal slog all the way up to its unsatisfying and depressingly predictable final minutes. Director Todd Phillip’s attempt to make a subversive sequel to his 2019 hit Joker is nothing short of a hollow, empty disaster of a movie.
Picking up a couple years after the events of Joker, Joker: Folie À Deux finds Arthur Fleck institutionalized at Arkham awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Fleck not only stumbles upon true love but also uncovers the music that’s always been inside him with a little help from Lee Quinzel. On top of Joaquin Phoenix reprising his Oscar-winning role as Fleck, Lady Gaga joins Joker: Folie À Deux as Quinzel, Fleck’s love interest who may not be who exactly she says claims to be.
Right out of the gate, Joker: Folie À Deux was going to be a tough sell, but it seemed like something of an honest effort was being made by the creative team to make this movie more than an incredibly blatant, and wholly unnecessary, cash-grab of a sequel. Bringing in Harley Quinn to co-headline the follow-up to the 2019 blockbuster was a genuinely smart (and obvious) way to generate interest, sparking wonder over just how this take on the Joker would handle the extremely popular Cupid of Crime. Unfortunately, Joker: Folie À Deux ends up absolutely squandering every last shred of good will, patience and intrigue as the film just drags itself along limply until it finally reaches its cruel, bitter finale.
It’s not as though Joker: Folie À Deux isn’t without a couple positives, meager as they are. The opening animated sequence is easily the film’s highlight, thanks to the excellent animation and some actual commentary on the themes behind this iteration of The Joker. That and a handful of the film’s fantasy sequences offer a few bright moments amongst Joker: Folie À Deux‘s near-unrelenting barrage of misery.
Phoenix once again gives an incredible performance as Fleck, and Gaga is right behind him just killing it. For the handful of moments when the film actually clicks, with Phillips’ sporadically inspired directing, Joker: Folie À Deux almost seems to come together as the creatives intended. Still, these fleeting (and sparse) glimpses only reinforce just how much of an utter mess this film is.
There’s just so much that’s gone awry here that it’s a little tricky to even nail down where to begin. Poorly structured with a lumbering, trudging pace and a thin, empty story that’s beyond pointless, Joker: Folie À Deux ends up one big waste of time for everyone involved (including the audience). It feels bitterly contemptuous toward not just the film’s actual characters but also the source material itself, going out of its way to make every character as awful, unlikable and as unrecognizable as possible. Not a single character comes out of this movie looking good, or are remotely worth cheering for, in any fashion whatsoever.
That doesn’t even touch upon the absolutely cruel final few moments of the film, which viciously nails this franchise’s coffin shut (and trust me, that’s not even a spoiler). Nothing about the film feels earned, not even the much-vaunted musical fantasy sequences. More frustratingly, these sequences have no impact on the film’s story whatsoever, but are instead simply fantasies – completely divorced from the plot – and nothing more. Not shared hallucinations, or anything of the like.
The musical sequences in Joker: Folie À Deux, despite looking pretty sharp for the most part, woefully bring the film to a screeching halt nearly every time one pops up. They’re just awkwardly and sporadically jammed into the film’s narrative without any real sense of rhyme or reason. Based on what’s here, Phillips doesn’t seem to understand that musicals use these types of sequences to push the narrative forward or offer character insight, and none of that really happens here.
One would think, when the film weirdly morphs into a courtroom drama, there’d finally be some true character or plot development, but nope. Instead, the courtroom scenes essentially just recap the events of the first Joker movie and not much else. There’s some good scraps of material here and there, but it’s not even close enough and all the courtroom theatrics get just as tiring and arduous as the rest of the movie. Joker: Folie À Deux has nothing new to say, nothing new to bring to the table, and its attempts to cover that up with flash and hollow dramatics just makes it worse all the more.
Both Phoenix and Gaga are clearly doing what they can to make this messy movie work, but their efforts fall flat when the script doesn’t give them anything meaningful to do. Regardless of his actual effort, Phoenix comes off as just revisiting his greatest hits from Joker, while Gaga isn’t given much to do outside of the musical sequence. Gaga’s Lee starts off as a legitimately intriguing character, but it doesn’t take long before Joker: Folie À Deux drags the character through a host of predictably boring tropes.
Even further, Joker: Folie À Deux doesn’t do anything or even mention the psychological concept the film is named after. It doesn’t play with the idea of an actual folie à deux occurring between Arthur and Lee at all. It’s truly baffling and a pretty on-the-nose example of just how this sequel creatively falls apart. The only thing Joker: Folie À Deux really succeeds at is reminding the audience of its superior predecessor.
For curious viewers looking to find out how this film went wrong, Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment’s 4K UltraHD Blu-ray release unsurprisingly won’t have any answers. While there’s a welcome amount of behind-the-scenes material included on Joker: Folie À Deux‘s home media release, it’s still pretty standard studio-produced material. The extras feature key members of the cast and crew discussing the characters, themes, and the challenges of making this high-profile sequel, but they’re a pretty vanilla rundown of the film’s production. Though, honestly, it’s not like these extras would’ve tackled any of the film’s clear issues.
Breaking it down, the bonus features on the physical and digital home media releases for Joker: Folie À Deux starts with “Everything Must Go (44:05),” a four-part documentary that mixes the typical fluffy EPK interviews with some pretty cool on-set footage with a look at the technical needs for some of the film’s musical sequences and bigger cinematic moments. Following that, “The Character of Music (8:20)” explores the film’s assorted musical sequences and dance numbers, “Crafted with Color (7:21)” talks about set design, “Color of Madness (6:22)” explores the the film’s cinematography and visual needs, and “Live! With The Joker (5:16)” breaks down the film’s neat-o opening animated sequence.
Despite the quality of the main feature, the bonus features packed-in with Joker: Folie À Deux are still worth a watch for those interested. It’s just unfortunate that the movie the cast and crew in these extras are so excited for ultimately doesn’t come about. In its place is a bitter, uninspired retread which spectacularly fails to recapture what made the first Joker a divisive Oscar-winning blockbuster.
An absolute mess of a movie, Joker: Folie À Deux is an insulting, pedestrian grind that doesn’t bring or say anything new or significant. While Gaga’s performance does elicit a novel spark or two, it’s quickly quelled by the mud these characters are ploddingly dragged through. A massive misfire, Joker: Folie à Deux is an aimless, miserable fiasco that lacks a plot and actively resents its own existence. Feel free to skip this one!
Please note Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided The World’s Finest with a 4K UltraHD Blu-ray edition of Joker: Folie À Deux to review.
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