Hollywood tends to play it safe when it comes to sequels.  They’re too afraid to take chances and so they stick to the same templates and formulas audiences lapped up the first time around.  That’s not the case with Joker: Folie à Deux.  I wasn’t enamoured by the film, but I give credit to returning director Todd Phillips (The Hangover) for creating something madly different from the original.  If you’re going down, you may as well go down swinging!

Released in late 2019, Joker received 11 Academy Award nominations (the most of any comic book adaptation in history) and, in addition to Joaquin Phoenix’s unforgettable performance, the film stood out from the superhero pack as it was centred entirely on a villain.  This wasn’t a stereotypical, over-the-top “bad guy” stealing nuclear codes with an army of incompetent henchmen.  Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) was a strange, complex, troubled human being who was the product of broader societal issues.  I described it at the time as a Ken Loach film set in the superhero realm.

Joker: Folie à Deux is set two years later where Fleck has been incarcerated for his previous crimes and is awaiting trial.  There’s no issue as to his guilt (he murdered a talk-show host on live television) and so his shrewd lawyer (Keener) is going with an insanity plea.  She is working with psychologists, digging up details from Fleck’s troubled upbringing, and showing the jury he suffers from multiple personality disorder.  The man who murdered five people is not the real Arthur Fleck.

Working with co-writer Scott Silver (8 Mile, The Fighter), Phillips has crafted a 138-minute movie which is part courtroom thriller, part romantic drama.  Media interest in Fleck’s case is through-the-roof (it’s the first publicly televised trial in Gotham’s history) and it evolves into a circus as the judge struggles to keep a reign on proceedings.  As that goes on, Fleck strikes up music-loving romance with Lee Quinzel (Gaga), a fellow patient at the Arkham State Hospital who is obsessed with his darker side.

There are a few interesting ideas swirling around here but the film lacks the clarity of the original.  The best element is the curious connection between Fleck and Quinzel and the extent to which each other understands the intent of the relationship.  It’s rare to have a comic book movie with such a thought-provoking desire (you’ll have lots to chat about with friends afterwards).  I also liked the addition of unexpected musical numbers to again, create a point of different from the first movie.

The rest is ho-hum.  The courtroom scenes drag, the lawyer interactions become repetitive, and not enough is made of Oscar nominee Brendon Gleeson (The Banshees of Inisherin) as a chatty security guard.  I was hoping the film would explode with a burst of new subplots and themes but, aside from the romance, that never eventuates.  Marking the first time Joaquin Phoenix has ever appeared in a sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux is likely to generate a wide, wide range of reactions.