Review of “Joker: Folie à Deux”: Sequel sings happily, but says nothing new

It turns out the joke is on us.

Five years after the hugely successful, if polarizing, “Joker,” director/co-writer Todd Phillips and Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix team up again for “Joker: Folie à Deux.” As you've probably heard, it's a sort of jukebox semi-musical in which Phoenix and Lady Gaga, as Harley Quinn forerunner Lee Quinzel, belt out covers of 20th-century pop songs and Broadway musical standards as if they were the leads in one insane mashup of “Natural Born Killers” and “La La Land.”

One admires Phillips' willingness to take such a big step, to attempt something uniquely dark and powerfully unreal – and of course a handful of insanely inspired sequences achieve this goal. Ultimately, however, the sequel has very little new to say about Arthur Fleck and his place in this world, and the musical interludes feel more like gratuitous self-indulgence than insightful and insightful passages that advance or improve the material.

Perhaps most disappointing: We're still waiting for the Joker to become THE JOKER. The sequel presents us with a central character with limited intelligence and a decidedly narrow worldview who's less frightening and more… boring.

With an overlong running time of 2 hours and 19 minutes, “Folie à Deux” is largely limited to two main locations. One of these is the dank, terrible Arkham State Hospital, where the frighteningly emaciated Arthur is so defeated that he can no longer muster even a daily joke to entertain the sadistic guards.

The other is the courtroom where prosecutor Harvey Dent (Harry Lawley), who will one day face his own two-sided crisis, demands the death penalty for Arthur, while Arthur's lawyer (Catherine Keener) argues that it is not Arthur who committed these acts committed murders, it is his alter ego, Joker. We only get brief glimpses of the chaos that reigns in the beleaguered city of Gotham, where the famous Joker is still seen as a rebel hero, even more so after being the subject of a TV movie.

The reality is that Arthur is still a sad and pathetic loner/loser who kidnapped and killed six people (no one knows he murdered his mother) who shuffles around miserably as he awaits trial – but he comes to life when he meets Lee Quinzel, who was imprisoned after setting her parents' apartment building on fire. She's obsessed with Arthur, like those terribly misguided women who write letters to imprisoned serial killers and sometimes end up marrying them.

Lady Gaga is an electrifying presence and an extraordinary actress, and it's pure, twisted magic when Lee looks at Arthur and tells him that once they're free, they'll build a mountain.

In the days leading up to the trial, Arthur and Lee fall madly in love, and director Phillips and his team present a series of creatively staged fantasy musical numbers, with Phoenix doing a serviceable job with limited vocal talent while Gaga's voice soars to heaven. In an inspired sequence in which Arthur and Lee host a “Sonny & Cher”-style television show, they cover the Bee Gees' “To Love Somebody.” In a fever dream sequence, Arthur delivers a passionate rendition of
“The Joker” – not the Steve Miller hit, which would have been appropriately crazy, but the Leslie Bricusse/Anthony Newley song from the 1964 musical “The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd.”

This is how it goes, and this is how it goes. Arthur and/or Lee delight us with covers of pop hits from the 1960s and 1970s like “(They Long to Be) Close to You” and “For Once in My Life” as well as sometimes creaky and overplayed Broadway chestnuts like “If My.” “Friends Could See Me Now,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” and “That’s Entertainment.” Production designer Mark Friedberg creates some visually stunning sets and Arianne Phillips' costumes add bright colors to the dreary real-life locations.

Several characters from “Joker” return to testify in court, including Zazie Beetz as Arthur's former neighbor Sophie, while a few new faces make impressive appearances, such as: B. Brendan Gleeson as a cheerfully cruel prison guard and Steve Coogan as a shady TV reporter who interviews Arthur in prison.

We almost never see Lady Gaga's Lee unless she's standing in Arthur's shadow, which feels like a missed opportunity because she's clearly far more intelligent, diabolical, and potentially dangerous than the broken man she idolizes. Phoenix once again gives an incredible performance in this role, but he doesn't really hit any new notes.

“Folie à Deux” pivots in the final act before we are treated to two major developments, one of which seems arbitrary and the other of which comes across as a borderline insult to the audience and the legacy of the Joker character. There's always a joker, there's always a clown – but when he doesn't transform into something bigger, bolder and more terrifying, it feels like we've seen this show before, just without the musical interludes.