Director Todd Phillips' Joker (2019) plunged into the heart of the rot-infested Gotham, where Arthur Fleck became the Joker, a maniacal misfit whose life had turned into an agonized scream, sometimes disguised as hysterical laughter. The result was scary, haunting, and grim.
To deliver a sequel, Phillips has made a bold choice. Joker: Folie a Deux adds musical numbers as part of the soundtrack and as performances. The story also brings Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) into contact with Lee (Lady Gaga), the character who, in other movies, will evolve into Harley Quinn.
If you want an alternate title for Folie a Deux, try Psychopath, the Musical.
Phillips opens the movie in Arkham, a fortress-like prison for the criminally insane. Amid a population of bereft inmates, a skeletal Arthur awaits trial for murder -- six of them.
In the film's early going, Arthur seems weirdly withdrawn, a canny strategy on Phoenix's part. Arthur's eerie detachment fits the dark mood established by Hildur Gudnadottir's pounding, ominous score, reprised from the first movie.
The screenplay lays the groundwork for Arthur's trial. Arthur's lawyer (Catherine Keener) wants to employ an insanity defense. She'll argue that the vicious Joker lives inside poor Arthur's tormented psyche. Arthur doesn't connect to this alternate self and hardly remembers his murderous outbursts. Abused as a child, Arthur's a wimp who can't accept his fiendishness -- or so his lawyer says.
Gotham's district attorney (Harry Lawtey) argues otherwise; he dismisses talk of Arthur's alternate personality as hooey.
As a Joker fan, I was predisposed to appreciate the inventiveness Phillips might bring to this sequel, which punctuates the movie's encompassing bleakness with musical numbers that evoke memories of a bygone Hollywood era.
Phillips pays homage to musicals when Arthur watches a scene from 1953's The Band Wagon featuring the song, That's Entertainment; a number that's later performed by Gaga to highlight a theme found in both movies: the exploitative tendency to bestow celebrity status on notorious criminals.
Lee and Arthur meet in Arkham, where she's serving time for arson. Lee belongs to a musical club that's supposed to help broken inmates heal. A prison guard (Brendan Gleeson) arranges for Arthur to join the group. Not only is Lee a fan of the Joker, but she's a kindred spirit, a lover of chaos.
The match may not be as fortuitous as it seems. Arthur thinks he's finally met a woman who can pierce the thick walls of his loneliness, the prison he lives in whether he's behind bars or not. The poor sap wants love; Lee craves thrills.
Phoenix adds sorrowful undertones to Arthur's edgy unpredictability. Gaga, who delivers lovely vocals, turns Lee into a thrill-seeker looking for a playmate.
Phoenix sings in a reedy yet effective style that's applied to songs such as When You're Smiling, an anthem for the Joker whose face is plastered with a lipstick smeared rictus. At one point, he fantasizes about appearing on TV with Lee, giving Phoenix and Gaga an opportunity to perform a duet.
A movie that opens with a mock Looney Tunes cartoon has no interest in settling for formula. Whatever you think of Folie a Deux, it's impossible to accuse Phillips of taking the easy way out.
He also tries to give the movie some moral weight. Leigh Gill delivers a brief but affecting performance as Gary Puddles, a witness in Arthur's trial. Puddles testifies about the harrowing consequences faced by those who come into Arthur's orbit.
Familiar themes -- turning violence into entertainment and the twisted narcissism that craves celebrity -- remain, but Phillips, who wrote the screenplay with Joker co-author Scott Silver, doesn't generate enough story to keep the movie from losing steam.
Folie a Deux begins to peter out about three-quarters of the way through its two-hour and 18-minute running time. Courtroom scenes undercut the dread that festers during Arthur's imprisonment, and the film's ending ... well ... let's just say, the movie ends.
Reservations aside, I want to conclude with an addendum. This edition of Joker may not entirely work, but it's daring, ambitious, and ungainly in crazy ways. Phillips' bold choices don't all pay off, but they beat the fan-serving rehash that might have been.
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