Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)

"What's a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?"
""I murdered five people.""

I only watched the original Joker in preperation of the sequel with Lady Gaga playing Harleen Quinzel. I was interested in her take on the character, and while I did enjoy the new portrayal, that's about all I liked about this film aside from the choice of song. 

It took me a while to see this, I originally planned to see it in theaters, which I'm glad I didn't. I think I'd be disappointed in the waste of money. Unlike a lot of other reviews, I went into this understanding that it was going to be a musical; singing aside, it was still a bad movie. 

The constant sad violin, the continuance of the character of Arthur, the refreshed take on Harley Quinn; I just didn't really find myself enjoying any of it. While I appreciated the perspective of Harley Quinn being some intense fangirl, I just found myself bored most of the time. The entire runtime was Lee being a bad influence on the already vulnerable Arthur, the prison guards bullying a traumatized person, and the media failing to understand the detriment of glorifying someone like Arthur to the public.

I appreciated the musical-ness of the film for the first portion, but then it just got tiring, as theatrical the scenes were and as amazing of a voice that Lady Gaga has. The lack of entertainment and failure to capture my attention is disheartening when I really hoped that this would change my opinion on the Joker movies, and while it was still better than the first in my opinion, not by a lot. 

I only watched the original Joker so that I could see Lady Gaga's character in the sequel, in which I find that sitting down to watch both was an immense waste of time. It was interesting to see Harvey Dent on-screen as a character, but with little elaboration; maybe they'll do a Harvey Dent spin-off and hopefully better? Not sure, which is how I felt throughout the majority of viewing; not sure. 

Disappointed that I stayed up late to stream this and even more disappointed that I wasted my time watching the original only for the sequel not to be much better. While I think that Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix did excellent jobs at their respective roles, I just found the overall plot and execution lacking.