Musicals are supposed to be fun. We’re supposed to be swept up in the soaring songs, the choreography, and the chance for characters to jump outside of reality and dance down the street as every background actor streams after them. So what happens when you watch a “musical” that seems to hate being one? Where the filmmakers can’t decide whether to embrace the genre and let the characters loose, or to get mired in social commentary?

That pattern, surprisingly, defines the sequel to Todd Phillips’ Joker. By claiming to be a musical,  the movie makes one of the most striking course corrections in blockbuster comic-book franchises. But that’s faint praise for a movie that’s otherwise a joyless slog, hellbent on holding its lead characters back from becoming the colourful rogues we know. 

Bizarrely, Joker: Folie à Deux seems embarrassed to be a movie about the Joker. Every time it gets close to letting the Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) and Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga) drift into twisted, dream-like musical sequences, the movie does it in a halting, tuneless way, exacerbated by Phoenix’s ear-stabbing vocal performance. On top of that, the movie also wants to be a sludgy courtroom drama. It tries to incorporate a social-justice message by questioning whether the Joker’s crimes in the last film were the result of his tortured upbringing and poorly treated mental illness, or whether he’s an unfeeling monster who hurts and kills for fun. While that was a theme of 2019’s Joker too, that film at least has enough forward momentum to show the Joker being unleashed at the end, implying we’d see him causing mayhem in this second installment. Not so.

Ultimately, the driving force of the sequel is one of wanting everything both ways. It wants a colourful, famous villain as a main character, but wants to humanize him in a way that strips away all the theatricality. It wants to adopt the trappings of the musical genre but do it in such a raw way that it’s unlistenable. And once the writers have painted themselves into a corner with all this waffling back and forth, the only solution is to brutally bring it all to an end and reset the continuity, leaving you wishing there was a point to any of the pop culture discourse over these movies.

How did we get here? That would be for Phillips and company to answer, but one theory floating around is that Phillips was taken aback by the reputation that the first film received as a rallying cry for violent incels. Granted, there is some logic in swinging away from the 70s-and-80s era-Scorsese ripoff that the first film became and into a different genre. After all, the Joker and Harley Quinn are meant to be court jesters of a sort, madly dancing together while their chaotic crimes unfold around them. But it only works if you commit.

The tonal issues infect the performances, too. Phoenix is less scary than he was in the last film, coming across more as a sad sack than a man on the brink. His one scene dedicated to going “full Joker” is wasted on him putting on an unconvincing accent and representing himself in court as a stereotypical Southern country lawyer. Meanwhile, Lady Gaga’s Harley has to work overtime to save the musical moments, but with everything else dragging her down, I began to wince every time I could feel a number coming along. Exactly what you want when you go to a musical! 

What’s worse is how unconcerned the movie seems to be with her character, ignoring any of the power dynamics that have made other depictions of the Joker and Harley interesting. All of this new Harley’s backstory is conveyed via scraps of dialogue, and we’re simply told she’s a fan of the psychotic, violent side of the Joker. When he tries to leave that identity behind, she ditches him, implying that she might eventually fall for the guy who turns up in the closing scene, who the writers suggest might be the “real” Joker - arguably the one we’ve been waiting to see. Too bad; roll credits!

I’ll never fully understand why Phillips went this route with these movies. The villains of the Batman universe can be gritty, but there’s a line you can cross where they stop feeling like recognizable characters and they just become labels. The versions seen in the Christopher Nolan or Matt Reeves Batman universes, meanwhile, hit the balance that Phillips was searching for. Realistic where they need to be, but unafraid to indulge in the fundamental silliness that these stories have always had. If you want to make a serious drama about mental illness and crime in 1980s New York or Chicago, do that. At the risk of sounding like the worst fanboys (and the rioting mobs) of these films: free the Joker!

Joker: Folie à Deux gets one star out of four.

Stray thoughts

• It’s shown that Arthur Fleck gets a cigarette from the guards every time he tells a joke, but as the movie continues, he seems to have a constant supply on him - sloppy and distracting.

• I’m not even sure that Fleck commits a single new crime over the whole runtime of this film, unless you count his brief escape during the climax.

• Even the Looney Toons-style cartoon at the beginning is confusing; there are inconsistencies in its premise that foreshadow how garbled the rest of the movie will be.