‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ review: Nothing about this sequel touches the theatrical flamboyance that marked the 1st film

Here’s a sequel we didn’t need.

It seemed like a hot idea, adding Lady Gaga and music to the mix as Joaquin Phoenix returns to the role that deservedly won him his first Oscar as Arthur Fleck, a failed standup comic who finds infamy as Joker, the clown prince of crime, with clown makeup to match, whose followers cheered when he shot dead an obnoxious TV talk-show host (Robert De Niro) on live TV.

The music isn’t really a new idea since the 2019 origin story featured Joker memorably rocking out on a stairway to Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2,” and twisting his face, body and smeary red lipgloss into contortions that defy physics. An encore was definitely in the cards.

What we get, however, is a static, claustrophobic mood piece that follows Arthur into a looney bin, where he’s been placed to save society from his murderous, manic episodes. Director Todd Phillips is again working with Scott Silver on a script that makes us wonder how much of the story is real or just the wild imaginings kicking around in Arthur’s crowded mind.

Unlike the justifiably popular first film that borrowed outrageously and constructively from two Martin Scorsese film classics, “Taxi Driver” and “King of Comedy,” the sequel frustratingly flounders around looking for an original place to land. Sadly, the search is futile.

Even sadder, the sequel reduces Lady Gaga to a supporting role. “Folie a Deux” is a French phrase meaning “madness for two.” We all know Gaga could have played the hell out of that concept of an idea. Instead, she’s reduced to being a Joker groupie, all adoringly misty-eyed since she watched a TV movie about his life. Even Jackie (the great Brendan Gleeson), a sadistic guard at the Arkham State Asylum, thinks Arthur is a celebrity.

Still, the wickedly watchable Gaga—a true star in any medium— makes the most of her role as Lee Quinzel, a fellow inmate and convicted arsonist who imagines herself as Harley Quinn, Joker’s accomplice and lover from the DC Comics. Why not? At least that fever dream gives her something to dig into and sing about (“If My Friends Could See Me Now”).

For the rest, the movie wastes a lot of time repeatedly looking at Arthur’s trial. His lawyer (a criminally wasted Catherine Keener) tries to use the insanity plea to save him from the death penalty. But the Gotham City district attorney, Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey), insists that Arthur is not a split personality, but a desperate loser eager to save himself.

The trial stuff is shockingly banal. It’s no wonder that Phillips throws in music to break up the monotony. The director says the pair’s duets on such songs as “Get Happy” and “For Once in My Life” were recorded live to highlight emotion instead of slick vocals. The songs are meant to feel like oldies that abused child Arthur listened to with his mom, who he later murdered.

It’s a crushing letdown that, except for the whispered song fragments, so little emotion comes through on screen, though the way Arthur and Lee share a dance in the rain in the pale moonlight truly is transporting. It’s a shared romantic illusion that actually defines folie à deux. And it’s over in a dreamy poof of what might have been.

Nothing about this sequel can touch the theatrical flamboyance and bruising ache that marked the first film. Phoenix still captures Arthur’s yearning with a striking, wounded tenderness. And Gaga shows how her starshine really can’t be muffled no matter how the film tries.

Still, “Joker: Folie à Deux” seems to be punishing itself for the misguided criticism that the first film was an incitement to violence. There’s precious little mischief or madness in it this time. Talk about sucking the life out of a party. Says Lee to Arthur during an onstage fantasy sequence, “Come on, baby, let’s give the people what they want.” I’m still waiting.