Remember when the Joker made a joke?At this point, he’s barely done it.
Last week, in preparation for watching and reviewing Joker: Folie à Deux, I finally got serious and watched the first Joker movie. Despite being a lifelong comic book reader and a good fan of Batman stuff (though I’ve always been a Superman guy), I’d been putting off seeing “Joker.”
Joker has become a bit of an incel holy book, skyrocketing in popularity as a movie ripped from a Martin Scorsese movie with little point other than great performances and a few faux arthouse plot beats.
I don’t like the first “Joker”. However, when early reviews for Joker: Folie à Deux began to arrive, many Incel Joker fans who loved the original felt that this sequel was a disingenuous threshold for criticizing both the protagonist and fans of the first film. I labeled it expensive. This piqued my interest. If “Joker” fans don’t like “Joker: Folie à Deux,” and I don’t like “Joker,” then I probably prefer “Folie à Deux,” right? Wrong. “Folie à Deux” is a complete dumpster fire in almost every direction.
This movie has ground floor tonal issues, plain and simple. The first Joker was widely perceived as an homage to, or even a rip-off of, Scorsese’s films (particularly Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy), so the sequel was created to maintain that reputation. I’m obsessed with the aesthetics. As a result, the movie feels lethargic and disjointed before it even begins.
And when it starts…will it start? Will anything happen in this movie? Nothing that happens to Joker in this movie matters until the abrupt ending, but it could have happened just as abruptly in the first 10 minutes. Oh, that could have happened at the end of the last movie. This will give you at least two hours to get back to normal.
And then, unfortunately, there’s the Joker himself. No one ever wanted Batman to be in a movie to take the stuffing out of this wet blanket. I mean, say what you will about the first movie, but at least in that movie the characters themselves are interesting. At least he’s doing something. Joker probably wore clown makeup for 20 minutes of the 138-minute movie. It’s two hours of whining with no real benefit.
I’m not even mentioning Harley Quinn – if you can even call her Harley Quinn. This movie definitely wasn’t. Harley didn’t appear in many movies. Outside of the admittedly very well-done musical sequences (newsflash: Lady Gaga can sing), Harley’s character is completely wasted and essentially goes nowhere.
And then there’s the “main message” of this movie. And what a message that is!
