From the complicated legacy of Joker (2019) to the the reveal of its pretentious French subtitle, from the announcement of Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn to the slow reveal that this is a musical, from its complicated marketing to a general sense of confusion about what this sequel is, Joker: Folie à Deux has become quite an enigma before its release.

So what is this movie and should you watch it?

Well what it is is not very good and no, you should not watch it. This movie’s best joke is every cent it takes out of audience’s wallets who buy a ticket and every minute of its 138 minute run time that it saps from those suckers.

But first let’s see what this movie has to say for itself –

“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. JOKER FOLIE À DEUX is a mesmerizing cinematic return to the deeply tragic and darkly fantastical world of Arthur Fleck, brought to the big screen through the bold and unparalleled filmmaking style of Todd Phillips,” reads the provided synopsis.

“Featuring Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur alongside Lady Gaga as Harleen ‘Lee’ Quinzel, JOKER FOLIE À DEUX gives a provocative look at the intoxicating & passionate whirlwind of mad love; an overwhelmingly potent force with a power to completely transform a person – with consequences for better or worse.”

We’ll get to the writing and how that synopsis expands into a full movie later, but it’s best that we further prepare you for what kind of movie this is with some analogy. If you’re a fan pop culture you’re probably aware of the concept of Flanderization – the process of which a character especially becomes a terrible parody of itself through lazy writing, usually leaning into some core that were once a simple part of that character’s identity then becomes their entire identity.

In the first movie Joker smokes cigarettes and that was part of his look and character, now he’s never not smoking. Joker doing a little dance and flourish was once a crescendo of the plot, now it’s happening in every second scene. In the first movie a flight of stairs became a landmark so now we have to visit it multiple times in the sequel.

This is an unparalleled speed run to self parody we’ve ever seen and it would be a fun train wreck to watch if it wasn’t so slow and drawn out. Joker (2019) wasn’t even that good of a movie, but this sequel mucks things up so badly that Folie à Deux feels like it’s a completely different animal that skinned that first movie and is continuing a horrific stage musical while wearing that first movie’s skin.

Almost everything wrong with this movie is in its writing. It’s so bad that again we have to fall back to comparisons because outright saying what’s wrong sounds so insane, and just telling you what happens is a spoiler.

This movie is like a child playing with a box of generic LEGO bricks. They start building a wall, but then they remember that robots are cool so the wall is dismantled and its pieces are used for robot construction. Hey Transformers are robots, what if the robot is now a Transformer? Let’s build some wheels and random car parts onto this robot. The coolest Transformer is Starscream so let’s start over and make a jet instead. Starscream in the Micheal Bay movies kind of looks like a Dorito, what food can we replicate in LEGO?

Oh no the kid has gotten fed up with indecision, the bricks are scattered all over the floor and in the confusion on that last thought they have also eaten one of the bricks.

That’s what the writing in this movie is like. There are so many interesting and fun ideas around identity, abuse, split personalities, the criminal justice system, insanity and more that are all brought up, maybe played with for a scene or two, and then dropped onto the floor, broken into so many LEGO bricks.

Joker: Folie à Deux is absolutely maddening to watch because of this fractured plot and theme dynamic and what makes it all so much worse is the fact that it’s a musical. This movie uses music like a bad punchline: every time a scene gains momentum, before it can reach an amazing apex and deliver on what it promises, a song happens.

Good musicals are supposed to use their music as the ultimate expression of human emotion. When simple speech, even impassioned speeches or shouting can no longer convey that emotion, that’s when the cast break into song. For the Joker sequel it seems that the writers were just too embarrassed to be earnest with their audience, so music takes the place of any real payoff for any given scene.

If it’s not the fear of earnestness that lead to this decision, it’s just a lack of talent at the keyboard. If you can’t write a proper end to your scene, plot or really entire movie, why not just awkwardly jam a song in there.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the last third of this movie. This may be the weakest finale to any movie we’ve ever seen. The end isn’t the payoff of that long run time, or the natural conclusion of a great build up, it’s a sad whimper the finish line.

If you liked Joker (2019) or just this version played by Phoenix, we have to imagine this is like watching your beloved childhood dog rapidly age right in front of you as it continually defecates on the floor, goes blind and is eventually put put to sleep.

Phoenix, Gaga and the rest of the cast are done a real disservice by this script as the cast puts in a hell of a lot of work to make this watchable.

Phoenix especially delivers on this front. It’s great to watch him work and we loved trying to catch a deliberate smile that he slips into otherwise serious scenes. It fits the character of this Joker, especially this version of him, and it’s a masterclass in how the most subtle of acting choices can have a big impact on a performance.

Gaga, unfortunately, was less impressive. We know that she can act, she just can’t do it very well with a script this bad. Those who want to hear her sing do get some fun performances from her on that front, though this is tempered by Phoenix’s singing which simply isn’t very good. You can hear that his voice is much more heavily edited and synthetized to sound better while Gaga’s performances receive either less work to make them better, or more subtle editing.

The rest of the cast is good and actually can be fun to watch. Standouts are Brendan Gleeson as a sadistic guard at Arkham and the best performance of the rest of the cast comes from an actor we can’t really name as it falls into pseudo-spoiler territory. No some actor portraying Batman doesn’t turn up and put in an Oscar-worthy performance or anything, we just want to savour the surprise of this exceedingly minor role and how good the performance is.

We’ll continue the compliment train by saying that this movie is very well put together. It looks fantastic, the audio is mostly comprehensible and on a purely technical level its great.

But these positives we mention at the end here simply cannot save this deranged script. We usually mention in other movie reviews that one more wide edit could have either saved a movie’s writing or at least elevated it to be spared from some easy mistakes, but this thing is rotten to its core.

We’re simply stunned by how wrong Joker: Folie à Deux has gone, how often it gets worse during the runtime, and how long that runtime is to tell a story that says nothing and fades into even less when the credits roll. We’ve given it what we believe I a very generous score given these problems as the cast and crew do their best to make the best of a terrible situation, but the final product is still the complete opposite of a recommendation.

FINAL SCORE: 4 OUT OF 10.