ArcaMax

Here's a ballsy move. You're Todd Phillips, a commercially successful mainstream film director (all three "Hangover" movies), who's open to the outre (you started out with a freakin' GG Allin documentary). In 2019 you released a dark, gritty, midbudget supervillain movie and watched as -- to your utter astonishment -- it grossed north of $1 billion worldwide. You had sworn from the outset that "Joker" was a one-shot, with no sequels lined up or even contemplated. But then the hardnosed realists at Warner Bros., which financed your supervillain pic to the tune of $55 million, wanted to have a word. They also wanted to give you $200 million to make that uncontemplated sequel. And what was your response? Your response was: "How about a musical?"

Well, maybe it wasn't your first response (and that $200 million is a figure of the "reportedly" sort). But eventually you and your "Joker" star, Joaquin Phoenix (who won an Oscar for that movie), hashed out details of a possible follow-up, and now, five years later, we have "Joker: Folie a Deux." And, yes, it is a musical -- although probably not one that an old-time tap 'n' tails star like Fred Astaire would recognize as such. (Like that would matter -- through the magic of licensing, Astaire in his dance-floor prime appears in this movie.)

"Folie a Deux" is brilliant in some ways. Phillips reunited his "Joker" team -- cowriter Scott Silver, production designer Mark Friedberg, cinematographer Lawrence Sher, and Icelandic composer Hildur Guonadottir (who also won an Oscar for her work on the last picture) -- so the director's vision of grotty urban ruin basted with doomy cello lines is just as gritty and maybe even doomier than before. The problem with this is that the story basically takes place in just two locations. One is Arkham State Hospital, whose color palette is a rebuke to cheerfulness of any kind; the other is a Gotham municipal courtroom, where there's lots of legal wrangling between defendant Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) and his attorney (Catherine Keener), and the prosecution, led by Batman-adjacent Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey).

Fleck is a far-gone mental patient at the Arkham State Hospital, heavily medicated and incessantly brutalized by security guards. But he has another life, too -- one that unfolds, as we now begin to see, in his tormented mind. There, with his painted face and magenta-colored suit, he presides over a world of his own as the grinning psychopath Joker.

One day Arthur meets a new Arkham patient named Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) and is immediately smitten. Like him, this woman has traveled a hard road in life -- she says she was abused by her father and betrayed by her mother, who had her committed to Arkham. As portrayed by Gaga, Lee is of course a new (and somewhat inscrutable) version of the longtime Joker sidekick Harley Quinn. She is an all-out Joker groupie. ("I haven't done anything with my life like you have," she tells the serial murderer.) These two were clearly made for each other. Defending her guy to another character, Lee says, "He's not sick, he's perfect."

Arthur's true mental state is the focus of his murder trial, which we keep revisiting. The defense contends that he suffers from a split personality and can't be blamed for Joker's depredations. The prosecution thinks this is nonsense and that Arthur should be punished for the murders he's committed.

The story plays out under a canopy of twinkly pop music, most of it -- from the 1927 "Me and My Shadow" to later standards like "That's Life" -- of vintage provenance. (Although the most moving performance in the movie is a Gaga-Phoenix duet on the 1967 Bee Gees hit "To Love Somebody.") Given the financial stakes involved in making this movie work, it was a bold decision to record the vocal performances live on set. This was no problem for Gaga, who would probably sound terrific singing in a wind tunnel. And of course Phoenix was nominated for an Oscar for his vocal work in the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line." He may not be Gaga, but he'll do. A larger problem for some viewers may be all the movie's sudden bursting-into-song moments, which play like parodies of the stylistic feature that turns so many people off musicals altogether. (Here, it also becomes wearying over the course of a much-too-long 138 minutes.)

For all of its technical excellence and narrative enterprise, the movie sometimes wallows in making its way through this dark and violent world. There's no light, no air. It's a picture that may work a lot better in 20 years at film-fest revivals. Right now, you have to wonder how many people will enjoy sitting through such a cheerless and uncompromising picture.

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To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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