Joker: Folie à Deux Review Roundup: Here’s what the critics think

The reviews for Joker: Folie à Deux have rolled in, and it's time to see how the next DC film is going to fare. Lets take a look and see.

Deadline</strong

Phillips likely could not have foretold the explosion of the musical form in unexpected ways this season, but with The End, Better Man, Emelia Perez, and Piece By Piece all exciting Telluride audiences over the weekend it is clear the genre is igniting a new era of innovation. Phillips, with today’s World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival where the 2019 Joker took the Golden Lion, has added his own voice to its evolution. With song, dance, comedy, darkness, animation, drama, violence and more, this is a musical, if it even is a musical, like no other.

The Guardian

There’s a great supporting cast and a barnstorming first act but Todd Phillips’s much-hyped Gotham sequel proves claustrophobic and repetitive.

The Hollywood Reporter

Phillips and Silver deserve credit for going their own way with a canonical DC character. But it’s difficult to imagine hardcore Batman universe aficionados being thrilled by a movie that — OK, this is definitely a spoiler — would seem to wipe out an entire future for a key nemesis enshrined in comic-book mythology, rendering him a sad, broken man.

The Times

The director Todd Phillips said there would be no follow-up to the original, but he changed his mind and the result is a derivative musical.

Variety

Did the critics, with “Joker,” turn into cautious executive scolds? In my opinion, they did. But the upshot is that Todd Phillips, making what I think is a huge mistake, listened to them. “Joker: Folie à Deux” may be ambitious and superficially outrageous, but in a basic way it’s an overly cautious sequel.

Vulture

Mostly, Arthur is acted upon, even when he thinks he’s seizing control — a punching bag for the world and, more importantly, for the director, who subjects the character to so many indignities that he actually stops being pitiable and starts resembling the punchline to a very long, shaggy joke. By the end of Joker: Folie à Deux, that joke feels like it’s on us.

As of publication, the Rotten Tomatoes score has not been revealed, and on Metacritic it is at a 52.

Joker: Folie à Deux is scheduled to hit theaters on Oct. 4, 2024.

18 comments

Sara

September 4, 2024

They're probably mad that the first one didn't result in enough mass shootings and whiteness riots, or whatever it was they pretended to be afraid of. So now they're complaining about the second one not being thrilling or provocative enough.

I only skimmed The Hollywood Reporter one (which isn't terrible, but pettishly denies that professional critics had anything to do with the hysteria around the first film). It annoyed me with this:

In hindsight, what was most troubling about Joker’s politics was that its bleak nihilism lacked a point of view coherent enough to make it genuinely radical or provocative.

No. What was provocative was that nihilism. That's exactly how many people experience anonymity and insecurity, above all when they're at the mercy of government services or abusive family. Not turning the film into a manifesto, with a clear central message that the charismatic main character could shout from the roofs of cars, was one of the film's strengths, not a weakness.

Anyone hoping for a happy or empowering ending for Arthur Fleck, or a plan for putting right the wrongs in a broken system, is being dumb.

ChE_MovieFan
September 4, 2024
I once read someone's criticism of the first Joker movie that said something like, "A bunch of terrible events happening in succession doesn't amount to a story." I flash on that every time I think about that movie. It sums up my feelings on it...
There's an entire subreddit devoted to Joker cringe, which is basically how I envisioned the movie before I saw it, but I came away really surprised by the positive response to it once I finally watched it. It's not about anything. It's just a bunch of things that happened to someone who has facial and vocal tics. It meanders through his Travis Bickle-inspired "descent into madness" (Taxi Driver also struck me as work print/student film than an actual masterwork, as an aside) which is basically just him doing meaningless, horrible things, randomly. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Even insanity, on-film, should have a structure, because it's a movie. And then the whole thing ends on the cliched "Was it all in his head???" All these things and interactions the movie showed you? Yeah, those are probably all in his head, but the movie gives you no clues as to how to discern fact from fiction, as that would require creativity and technique that no one involved seemed to possess. It could not have been a more boringly derivative movie if it was actually trying to be one.
And Joaquin over-acted every scene. There's no purpose behind how over-the-top he went, no depth or nuance to the tics his character is afflicted with. "Dance, dance, stretch your mouth, keep dancing!", is all the direction he had on-set. But because it's 'Joker' and someone made half-hearted allusions towards "mental health is important", he won the Best Actor Award on a career worst performance...
1. Sara
  September 4, 2024
  I worked as a volunteer providing in-home care to the disabled, including people with severe mental illness, brain damage, and dementia, and I guarantee you that a lot of the tics and weirdness and awkwardness in Phoenix's performance are accurate. Some medications can cause tardive dyskinesia, which can involve extensive ticcing.
  If the movie was without rhyme or reason, it probably wouldn't have resonated with so many people. A sense of helplessness and a desire to defy are what seems to have attracted a majority (the most quoted lines are "All I have are negative thoughts" and "You get what you f*cking deserve"). But the movie is centered on someone who has no ability to appeal to a higher power. Arthur's been, in some sense, in the system since his infancy.
  I didn't see any randomness to the things he did. He shot the jerks in the subway because they were assaulting him, he shot the guy from work for taking advantage of him, making a joke of him, and setting him up to get fired, he killed his mother for lying to him, and he killed Murray for mocking him and then inviting him onto his show to mock him some more. He stalked his neighbor because he thought she seemed nice. He made funny faces at the child because he wanted to make somebody smile. He was pretty clear that he wanted to be seen and liked after a lifetime of being rejected as creepy. (A lot of mentally ill people are legit creepy as hell.) The personality cult that blew up around him after the live television murder gave him the attention he wanted.
  I don't think "It was all in his head" is how the film ended. Scenes without Arthur, like the murder of the Waynes by a masked rioter, have to be taken for granted as really real, which means that the riots where they occurred also have to be taken for granted. Things like his relationship with his neighbor are clearly fantasies since she obviously did not like him after his gun miming.
  There are things to criticize in the film, like a not entirely accurate portrayal of how hallucinations and delusions work. (It's done much better than it usually is in the comics.) But I don't really care about those. The things I liked, I really liked. My work with the disabled, and the extreme frustration I experienced and witnessed, undoubtedly contributed to my positive reception of the film. But I do think it's a legitimately good film.
  1. ChE_MovieFan
    September 4, 2024
    Events within a scene have causal flow, but it's just a bunch of scenes loosely connected to each other which are supposed to be telling a congruent story; a depiction of a man descending into hell. From one scene to the next, there is no real sense of agency or direction. One horrible thing happens one scene, another horrible thing happens the next. Characters can feel helpless and aimless, but the movie depicting that needs structure, not just a sense the filmmakers are throwing anything and everything at the wall to see what sticks.
    We have these random interludes of Arthur dancing around to an affecting soundtrack. Why? Is there some deep meaning here? Is there something being signified by this? Or does this just seem like something a mentally ill person who removes all inhibitions might do, and it filmed well and was on their list of shots they could set to the music rights they purchased? It's just a random thing he does throughout the movie. "Well, his life is meaningless, so it's fitting." Movies can depict a meaningless existence in a meaningful, purposeful manner with actual narrative flow.
    There being events that we know happened, because of course we know Bruce Wayne's parents got murdered, doesn't offset the issue that the movie makes the laziest, cheapest use of "was it all in his head". If you look at Fight Club, David Fincher cleverly peppered clues throughout the narrative that something was up, and filmed alternative versions of those scenes to reveal what was imagined and what was true, all while driving a focused narrative. 'Joker' just does a bunch of stuff, and then, at the end, with no setup or technique in sight, says "or maybe he didn't?" It takes a unique storytelling mechanic which is very difficult to pull off and turns it into a cliched trope by not even trying to do anything with it, aside from the mere suggestion of it. It's infinitely interpretable with zero boundaries, and that's not creative storytelling. It's just Calvinball. Anyone can play Calvinball.
    1. Sara
      September 4, 2024
      I have known mentally ill people who make music and dance at extremely awkward times. It does happen. It isn't cinematic like the dancing on the steps, but it's a thing.
      The film does overstate Arthur's victimization, but I see cohesion, direction, and agency. For instance: Arthur is attacked on the street; Arthur is offered a gun; Arthur gets chewed out for losing the sign during the attack; Arthur starts carrying the gun; Arthur gets fired over having the gun on him during a job; Arthur uses the gun after being fired. All of these cohere around his work and workplace environment.
      I already said that the handling of the hallucination and delusion element was not the best, but there are clear signs that some events are imagined and some not. Arthur's interaction with his pretty neighbor started out casually friendly, then got strange. He stalked her. She showed up at his door, all smiles and acceptance. This was so unnatural and unlikely that any viewer should have felt it wasn't real. I know I did. (I literally cannot imagine there is any woman alive who honestly believes in the neighbor finding Arthur tolerable, much less attractive.) Arthur's fantasy of success at the comedy club is also unequivocably set down as fantasy: He was clearly flopping hard, then suddenly he wasn't. Later he sees his performance aired on Murray's show and realizes how poor it was. When Murray's people call him to schedule him for the show, he accepts. How are things like Arthur trying out his act at the club, failing, assuming the clown identity in full, and then going onto Murray's show to confess, scream at him, and shoot him not signs of agency? Going to Wayne Manor was also a choice Arthur made on his own, with no prompting or accidents to drive him in that direction.
      It's like we watched two different movies.
    2. Madeleine
      September 4, 2024
      I haven't read about the making of Joker but Arthur's dancing may have been partly inspired by Gena Rowlands' (RIP) performance in John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence. There's no explanation for it there; the viewer is left to try to determine what it means. Rowlands' character was bipolar I think, but it's been a minute since I watched it so I can't be sure. In Phillips' film the dancing seemed to be a physical manifestation of Arthur's mental life where he imagines himself a successful entertainer.
      The film falls far short of being a masterpiece but random isn't a word I would apply to the things happening in it. My main criticism of the film qua film is that it's cobbled together from better films and comic books. (Everybody comments about the Taxi Driver connection but those tracking shots are right out of Elephant.) Still, I liked its marriage of Scorsesean drama with comic book villain origin.
    3. ChE_MovieFan
      September 4, 2024
      There's no plot in the movie, there's nothing motivating events which happen. One can't analyze the meaning of it all because there's really no meaning to it. The filmmakers have said, "it shows why we should be kind to our most vulnerable and take care of the mentally ill". Okay, is that a controversial opinion or something? I mean, "were it so easy"... That's not a character portrait without character agency. It's purely a slice of life movie, without much insight (as opposed to a movie like Ikiru, which is examining someone on a personal journey) and the life is horrible, and then the movie ends. And all there was along the way was pretty imagery set to a nice soundtrack with a "was it all real?" question.
      You're right in saying that it's a cobbling-together of other movies; most of them better, and the most obvious being Taxi Driver (which I admittedly dislike, but it's an undeniable classic film). And that's what makes it so derivative. It doesn't advance anything beyond the movies it's standing on top of. And Scorsese kinda disavowed it, basically saying that he's with it until the guy puts on clown makeup and calls himself "Joker", which is where it ceases to be real psychology. It's too well-made to be called "bad", but I don't think it's good. Todd Phillips has never struggled to make a good looking movie. His Hangover movies were stylish, as well. But I think his intellectual reach was beyond his grasp on Joker.
    4. Madeleine
      September 5, 2024
      I can't be sure if your first paragraph is directed to my comment or to Sara's. I agree that the film is very thin in places. I don't agree that there's not enough guidance to analyze Todd Phillips' intentions.
      To do Todd Phillips justice it should be borne in mind that if his goal was a realistic psychological portrait or sociological study of urban unrest he probably wouldn't have chosen a comic book villain who dresses as a clown as his subject. His Joker is grounded relative to the canon comics version but hammy and cartoony compared to Travis Bickle.
    5. ChE_MovieFan
      September 5, 2024
      Well, you compared another movie with unexplained dancing as a cover for this one, so I was just sharpening my point. It's not just specific to the dancing, it's symptomatic of there being no guiding light for the movie. It's not aiming towards anything, there doesn't seem to be any real character agency - which means there's nothing really motivating events. A bunch of terrible things happened, or didn't, and then it ends. And it's like "What was that about?" And the director is like "Well...it means take care of people with mental issues." And I'm like, "I think that's a moral of a story, not a story in and of itself."
      I want to watch a cleverly assembled parable which makes that point along the way, and is well-made with the technical bits. I don't just want to watch a 'very well-crafted, but meandering and pretentious' allusion towards it.
    6. Madeleine
      September 5, 2024
      I wouldn't say I was using the Cassavetes film as "a cover" for this. I was only mentioning a possible inspiration for one of the forms Arthur's fantasizing took. The ideas of performance and performativity are found all through the film.
      I didn't mind that the story was something outside Arthur's control. I actually found that interesting. Arthur was cast as a hero or villain by a mass movement and mass media when his goals were purely personal and he was scarcely aware of the political fracas. I liked that. Many worthwhile stories are nothing like parables.

Kaingerc

September 4, 2024

I'm not sure how interested I am in watching this,

I wasn't that super invested in the first one (it felt like someone took a couple of Scorsese films put some clown makeup on them and called it a day), so the fact they made the second a Jukebox musical with Lady Gaga as Harley, while certainly being a "choice", is not really enough to convince me to see this in theaters. (maybe when it comes out on streaming)

da da da

September 4, 2024

Sounds like a cold shower.

Rich

September 4, 2024

I suspect it will be another great performance by Phoenix surrounded by a terrible movie, just like the first one. Except this time around, we'll have to deal with flat gaga acting.

jrvc

September 4, 2024

I always thought the first movie didn't need a sequel, it's like giving Taxi Driver one

Madeleine

September 4, 2024

I'm most interested in this as a way to develop concepts from the comics that will never happen in the comics.

In episode nine of Caped Crusader Harvey Dent puts on a fedora to conceal some of his disfigurement. It's standard noir attire but it reminded me of Alain Delon's appearance in Jean-Pierre Melville's classic Gallic noir Le Samouraï. I don't know that that was the intention but it made me ask myself, why do Batman comics plunder each other back and forth when there are so many other sources? Most of the people creating these mid superhero comics don't seem to know any arts except other mid superhero comics.

I like the ideas Todd Phillips has brought to the table even if he is himself a shameless plunderer. Tepid reviews won't keep me from looking forward to this.

Robin MB

September 5, 2024

I forgot this was coming out this month

Kara

September 6, 2024

F the critics.

Blockhead Jr.

September 21, 2024

Figures. There was no need for this sequel and forcing it had consequences.

Sara
September 4, 2024
They're probably mad that the first one didn't result in enough mass shootings and whiteness riots, or whatever it was they pretended to be afraid of. So now they're complaining about the second one not being thrilling or provocative enough.
I only skimmed The Hollywood Reporter one (which isn't terrible, but pettishly denies that professional critics had anything to do with the hysteria around the first film). It annoyed me with this:
In hindsight, what was most troubling about Joker’s politics was that its bleak nihilism lacked a point of view coherent enough to make it genuinely radical or provocative.
No. What was provocative was that nihilism. That's exactly how many people experience anonymity and insecurity, above all when they're at the mercy of government services or abusive family. Not turning the film into a manifesto, with a clear central message that the charismatic main character could shout from the roofs of cars, was one of the film's strengths, not a weakness.
Anyone hoping for a happy or empowering ending for Arthur Fleck, or a plan for putting right the wrongs in a broken system, is being dumb.
1. ChE_MovieFan
  September 4, 2024
  I once read someone's criticism of the first Joker movie that said something like, "A bunch of terrible events happening in succession doesn't amount to a story." I flash on that every time I think about that movie. It sums up my feelings on it...
  There's an entire subreddit devoted to Joker cringe, which is basically how I envisioned the movie before I saw it, but I came away really surprised by the positive response to it once I finally watched it. It's not about anything. It's just a bunch of things that happened to someone who has facial and vocal tics. It meanders through his Travis Bickle-inspired "descent into madness" (Taxi Driver also struck me as work print/student film than an actual masterwork, as an aside) which is basically just him doing meaningless, horrible things, randomly. There's no rhyme or reason to it. Even insanity, on-film, should have a structure, because it's a movie. And then the whole thing ends on the cliched "Was it all in his head???" All these things and interactions the movie showed you? Yeah, those are probably all in his head, but the movie gives you no clues as to how to discern fact from fiction, as that would require creativity and technique that no one involved seemed to possess. It could not have been a more boringly derivative movie if it was actually trying to be one.
  And Joaquin over-acted every scene. There's no purpose behind how over-the-top he went, no depth or nuance to the tics his character is afflicted with. "Dance, dance, stretch your mouth, keep dancing!", is all the direction he had on-set. But because it's 'Joker' and someone made half-hearted allusions towards "mental health is important", he won the Best Actor Award on a career worst performance...
  1. Sara
    September 4, 2024
    I worked as a volunteer providing in-home care to the disabled, including people with severe mental illness, brain damage, and dementia, and I guarantee you that a lot of the tics and weirdness and awkwardness in Phoenix's performance are accurate. Some medications can cause tardive dyskinesia, which can involve extensive ticcing.
    If the movie was without rhyme or reason, it probably wouldn't have resonated with so many people. A sense of helplessness and a desire to defy are what seems to have attracted a majority (the most quoted lines are "All I have are negative thoughts" and "You get what you f*cking deserve"). But the movie is centered on someone who has no ability to appeal to a higher power. Arthur's been, in some sense, in the system since his infancy.
    I didn't see any randomness to the things he did. He shot the jerks in the subway because they were assaulting him, he shot the guy from work for taking advantage of him, making a joke of him, and setting him up to get fired, he killed his mother for lying to him, and he killed Murray for mocking him and then inviting him onto his show to mock him some more. He stalked his neighbor because he thought she seemed nice. He made funny faces at the child because he wanted to make somebody smile. He was pretty clear that he wanted to be seen and liked after a lifetime of being rejected as creepy. (A lot of mentally ill people are legit creepy as hell.) The personality cult that blew up around him after the live television murder gave him the attention he wanted.
    I don't think "It was all in his head" is how the film ended. Scenes without Arthur, like the murder of the Waynes by a masked rioter, have to be taken for granted as really real, which means that the riots where they occurred also have to be taken for granted. Things like his relationship with his neighbor are clearly fantasies since she obviously did not like him after his gun miming.
    There are things to criticize in the film, like a not entirely accurate portrayal of how hallucinations and delusions work. (It's done much better than it usually is in the comics.) But I don't really care about those. The things I liked, I really liked. My work with the disabled, and the extreme frustration I experienced and witnessed, undoubtedly contributed to my positive reception of the film. But I do think it's a legitimately good film.
    1. ChE_MovieFan
      September 4, 2024
      Events within a scene have causal flow, but it's just a bunch of scenes loosely connected to each other which are supposed to be telling a congruent story; a depiction of a man descending into hell. From one scene to the next, there is no real sense of agency or direction. One horrible thing happens one scene, another horrible thing happens the next. Characters can feel helpless and aimless, but the movie depicting that needs structure, not just a sense the filmmakers are throwing anything and everything at the wall to see what sticks.
      We have these random interludes of Arthur dancing around to an affecting soundtrack. Why? Is there some deep meaning here? Is there something being signified by this? Or does this just seem like something a mentally ill person who removes all inhibitions might do, and it filmed well and was on their list of shots they could set to the music rights they purchased? It's just a random thing he does throughout the movie. "Well, his life is meaningless, so it's fitting." Movies can depict a meaningless existence in a meaningful, purposeful manner with actual narrative flow.
      There being events that we know happened, because of course we know Bruce Wayne's parents got murdered, doesn't offset the issue that the movie makes the laziest, cheapest use of "was it all in his head". If you look at Fight Club, David Fincher cleverly peppered clues throughout the narrative that something was up, and filmed alternative versions of those scenes to reveal what was imagined and what was true, all while driving a focused narrative. 'Joker' just does a bunch of stuff, and then, at the end, with no setup or technique in sight, says "or maybe he didn't?" It takes a unique storytelling mechanic which is very difficult to pull off and turns it into a cliched trope by not even trying to do anything with it, aside from the mere suggestion of it. It's infinitely interpretable with zero boundaries, and that's not creative storytelling. It's just Calvinball. Anyone can play Calvinball.
      1. Sara
        September 4, 2024
        I have known mentally ill people who make music and dance at extremely awkward times. It does happen. It isn't cinematic like the dancing on the steps, but it's a thing.
        The film does overstate Arthur's victimization, but I see cohesion, direction, and agency. For instance: Arthur is attacked on the street; Arthur is offered a gun; Arthur gets chewed out for losing the sign during the attack; Arthur starts carrying the gun; Arthur gets fired over having the gun on him during a job; Arthur uses the gun after being fired. All of these cohere around his work and workplace environment.
        I already said that the handling of the hallucination and delusion element was not the best, but there are clear signs that some events are imagined and some not. Arthur's interaction with his pretty neighbor started out casually friendly, then got strange. He stalked her. She showed up at his door, all smiles and acceptance. This was so unnatural and unlikely that any viewer should have felt it wasn't real. I know I did. (I literally cannot imagine there is any woman alive who honestly believes in the neighbor finding Arthur tolerable, much less attractive.) Arthur's fantasy of success at the comedy club is also unequivocably set down as fantasy: He was clearly flopping hard, then suddenly he wasn't. Later he sees his performance aired on Murray's show and realizes how poor it was. When Murray's people call him to schedule him for the show, he accepts. How are things like Arthur trying out his act at the club, failing, assuming the clown identity in full, and then going onto Murray's show to confess, scream at him, and shoot him not signs of agency? Going to Wayne Manor was also a choice Arthur made on his own, with no prompting or accidents to drive him in that direction.
        It's like we watched two different movies.
      2. Madeleine
        September 4, 2024
        I haven't read about the making of Joker but Arthur's dancing may have been partly inspired by Gena Rowlands' (RIP) performance in John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence. There's no explanation for it there; the viewer is left to try to determine what it means. Rowlands' character was bipolar I think, but it's been a minute since I watched it so I can't be sure. In Phillips' film the dancing seemed to be a physical manifestation of Arthur's mental life where he imagines himself a successful entertainer.
        The film falls far short of being a masterpiece but random isn't a word I would apply to the things happening in it. My main criticism of the film qua film is that it's cobbled together from better films and comic books. (Everybody comments about the Taxi Driver connection but those tracking shots are right out of Elephant.) Still, I liked its marriage of Scorsesean drama with comic book villain origin.
      3. ChE_MovieFan
        September 4, 2024
        There's no plot in the movie, there's nothing motivating events which happen. One can't analyze the meaning of it all because there's really no meaning to it. The filmmakers have said, "it shows why we should be kind to our most vulnerable and take care of the mentally ill". Okay, is that a controversial opinion or something? I mean, "were it so easy"... That's not a character portrait without character agency. It's purely a slice of life movie, without much insight (as opposed to a movie like Ikiru, which is examining someone on a personal journey) and the life is horrible, and then the movie ends. And all there was along the way was pretty imagery set to a nice soundtrack with a "was it all real?" question.
        You're right in saying that it's a cobbling-together of other movies; most of them better, and the most obvious being Taxi Driver (which I admittedly dislike, but it's an undeniable classic film). And that's what makes it so derivative. It doesn't advance anything beyond the movies it's standing on top of. And Scorsese kinda disavowed it, basically saying that he's with it until the guy puts on clown makeup and calls himself "Joker", which is where it ceases to be real psychology. It's too well-made to be called "bad", but I don't think it's good. Todd Phillips has never struggled to make a good looking movie. His Hangover movies were stylish, as well. But I think his intellectual reach was beyond his grasp on Joker.
      4. Madeleine
        September 5, 2024
        I can't be sure if your first paragraph is directed to my comment or to Sara's. I agree that the film is very thin in places. I don't agree that there's not enough guidance to analyze Todd Phillips' intentions.
        To do Todd Phillips justice it should be borne in mind that if his goal was a realistic psychological portrait or sociological study of urban unrest he probably wouldn't have chosen a comic book villain who dresses as a clown as his subject. His Joker is grounded relative to the canon comics version but hammy and cartoony compared to Travis Bickle.
      5. ChE_MovieFan
        September 5, 2024
        Well, you compared another movie with unexplained dancing as a cover for this one, so I was just sharpening my point. It's not just specific to the dancing, it's symptomatic of there being no guiding light for the movie. It's not aiming towards anything, there doesn't seem to be any real character agency - which means there's nothing really motivating events. A bunch of terrible things happened, or didn't, and then it ends. And it's like "What was that about?" And the director is like "Well...it means take care of people with mental issues." And I'm like, "I think that's a moral of a story, not a story in and of itself."
        I want to watch a cleverly assembled parable which makes that point along the way, and is well-made with the technical bits. I don't just want to watch a 'very well-crafted, but meandering and pretentious' allusion towards it.
      6. Madeleine
        September 5, 2024
        I wouldn't say I was using the Cassavetes film as "a cover" for this. I was only mentioning a possible inspiration for one of the forms Arthur's fantasizing took. The ideas of performance and performativity are found all through the film.
        I didn't mind that the story was something outside Arthur's control. I actually found that interesting. Arthur was cast as a hero or villain by a mass movement and mass media when his goals were purely personal and he was scarcely aware of the political fracas. I liked that. Many worthwhile stories are nothing like parables.
Kaingerc
September 4, 2024
I'm not sure how interested I am in watching this,
I wasn't that super invested in the first one (it felt like someone took a couple of Scorsese films put some clown makeup on them and called it a day), so the fact they made the second a Jukebox musical with Lady Gaga as Harley, while certainly being a "choice", is not really enough to convince me to see this in theaters. (maybe when it comes out on streaming)
da da da
September 4, 2024
Sounds like a cold shower.
Rich
September 4, 2024
I suspect it will be another great performance by Phoenix surrounded by a terrible movie, just like the first one. Except this time around, we'll have to deal with flat gaga acting.
jrvc
September 4, 2024
I always thought the first movie didn't need a sequel, it's like giving Taxi Driver one
Madeleine
September 4, 2024
I'm most interested in this as a way to develop concepts from the comics that will never happen in the comics.
In episode nine of Caped Crusader Harvey Dent puts on a fedora to conceal some of his disfigurement. It's standard noir attire but it reminded me of Alain Delon's appearance in Jean-Pierre Melville's classic Gallic noir Le Samouraï. I don't know that that was the intention but it made me ask myself, why do Batman comics plunder each other back and forth when there are so many other sources? Most of the people creating these mid superhero comics don't seem to know any arts except other mid superhero comics.
I like the ideas Todd Phillips has brought to the table even if he is himself a shameless plunderer. Tepid reviews won't keep me from looking forward to this.
Robin MB
September 5, 2024
I forgot this was coming out this month
Kara
September 6, 2024
F the critics.
Blockhead Jr.
September 21, 2024
Figures. There was no need for this sequel and forcing it had consequences.

Batman News Archive

Joker: Folie à Deux Review Roundup: Here’s what the critics think

18 comments

Browse By Topic

Browse By Year