‘A dreary, underwhelming, pointless slog’

Joaquin Phoenix returns because the notorious supervillain with Girl Gaga as his sidekick in a musical sequel that’s “disappointing” and “not a lot enjoyable”.

When is the Joker going to get on with being the Joker? That was the query that nagged me all through Todd Phillips’s award-winning 2019 drama, Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix because the nascent supervillain. The movie spent two hours telling the grim and gritty backstory of Arthur Fleck’s abusive childhood, his medical points, his eventual adoption of a white-faced, clown-suited new id, and the killing spree that prompted a collection of riots in Gotham Metropolis. It even confirmed him assembly the younger Bruce Wayne, ie, the boy who could be Batman. Nevertheless it did not present him pulling off any of the flowery robberies which have made him Batman’s most notorious enemy ever since his DC Comics debut in 1940. It did not present him being the Joker.

To be truthful, the concept of concentrating on Fleck’s pre-crime boss interval, and of paying homage to Martin Scorsese’s Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties urban-blight movies within the course of, was what made Joker so groundbreaking. However now that Phillips has co-written and directed a sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, should not we lastly get to see him planning heists, crushing rivals and maybe even coming face-to-mask with the Caped Crusader? Apparently not. Phillips and his co-writer, Scott Silver, have determined to hold on with but extra of Fleck’s backstory as a substitute. It is an interesting determination which bravely subverts viewers expectations, however it does end in a movie that may be a dreary, underwhelming, pointless slog.

The most important shock is that half of Joker: Folie à Deux is about in Gotham’s Arkham Asylum, the place the emaciated Fleck is plodding lifelessly by his incarceration, and the opposite half is about within the metropolis’s central courtroom, the place his sanity is being weighed up by a choose and jury. The remainder of Gotham is barely glimpsed. Within the asylum, Fleck is teased by a guard (Brendan Gleeson) and interviewed by a TV reporter (Steve Coogan). And in courtroom, his lawyer (Catherine Keener) argues with the district legal professional (Harry Lawtey) about whether or not Joker and Fleck are two separate personas. Comics followers will admire the element that the Gotham’s DA is Harvey Dent, so he’s destined to develop into the diabolical Two-Face. However that does not make the drawn-out courtroom debate any extra compelling. It simply signifies that we have now the frustration of watching two totally different characters who’re almost-but-not-quite Batman villains.

Truly, make that three. Whereas Fleck is in an Arkham music remedy class, he meets Lee Quinzel, performed by Girl Gaga: Lee is Phillips’s model of the Joker’s sidekick, Harley Quinn, who was performed in Suicide Squad and Birds Of Prey by Margot Robbie. On this model of occasions, Lee is an admirer who encourages Fleck to cease being a quiet, sedated inmate and to start out being his flamboyant alter ego as soon as once more. One instance of this flamboyance, when it does ultimately return, is that Fleck sits in courtroom carrying his trademark swimsuit and make-up — and someway we’re alleged to consider that the choose would put up with such silliness, even whereas he blusters, “I am not letting you flip my courtroom right into a circus!”

Lee can be central to the movie’s massive gimmick, which is that she and Fleck sing to one another, and fantasise about being in Hollywood musicals and tv specials. These song-and-dance numbers are a welcome alternative to listen to Gaga belting out a number of the most romantic requirements within the American songbook, and a much less welcome alternative to listen to Phoenix delivering his personal croakier renditions. However none of those interludes is staged with the crazed creativeness you may count on the Joker and Harley Quinn to own. And as a substitute of shifting the story alongside, as songs in musicals ought to, they sluggish it down. You are left with the sensation that Phillips merely did not have sufficient of a plot to fill one other two hours with out them.

It is a disappointing movie — however I think that is precisely what it is meant to be. What Phillips seems to be doing is responding to the way in which Fleck was acquired by followers of 2019’s Joker. To me, he at all times got here throughout as a passive unlucky who stirred up riots kind of by chance, however some viewers noticed him as a revolutionary Robin Hood, putting a blow for the dispossessed. In Joker: Folie à Deux, Phillips is not taking any possibilities. He has devoted his sequel to the message that Fleck is a wimpy, self-centred stooge who lets down everybody round him. He is a no person. Relying on the way you have a look at it, this demythologising train is both daring or it is irritatingly smug, however it’s positively not a lot enjoyable. Phillips appears to be saying that for those who fell for Fleck’s Messianic self-image the final time round, then the joke’s on you.