“It doesn’t work as a film or a musical. What a waste of $200 million.”

Is 2019 joker a masterpiece? Regardless of your answer to this question, there's certainly no denying that it's a great film – maybe not a great one Comic book Film – and a fascinating character study about a disturbed man's descent into complete madness. Say what you will about the treatment of the source material, but the $1 billion blockbuster gave the classic Batman villain a new twist and proved to be a thoroughly satisfying experience. So why make a sequel? Despite joker I felt pretty self-contained and there were certainly places I could pursue Arthur Fleck's story next, and his twisted romance with Harley Quinn is as good a place as any; it's just a shame Joker: Folie à Deux turns out to be little more than a smug bore.

That might sound like too harsh a statement, so let's get straight to the negative aspects to explain it better. The biggest problem is that the film simply doesn't work. There is no real story and no compelling evidence that this sequel needs to exist. While that's a statement made far too often about movies, it's fitting for a sequel that's so pointless. We meet Arthur in Arkham, he meets Lee through a series of contrived circumstances and is then put on trial for the crimes he committed in the hopes of proving that Joker is a character in his own right. The goal is for him to avoid the death penalty, but Arthur doesn't seem to care and neither do we. While the film is about Arthur coming to terms with who he is, it's not interesting enough for such a complex character and there's no reason to root for or against him.

joker I've already explored the complexities of Arthur Fleck and Joker and left Joker: Folie à Deux retreading old ground and hitting one familiar note after another. From Arthur's eerily skeletal physique to his fits of laughter and the fact that everyone is terrible to him, we've been here and seen it all before. The film has nothing new to say and tries to make up for it with a meandering cartoon opening and painful musical interludes. And this isn't coming from a comic book fan incensed that someone would dare add songs to an adaptation; As a musical fan, you can't deny that these set pieces are poorly performed, poorly choreographed and completely unimaginative. It is La La Land in an institution…without the style or talent that made this film so unique and celebrated.

Amazingly, filmmaker Todd Phillips was paid up to $200 million to make this sequel. Without adding anything original, other than the fact that Joker is bad and is definitely not someone we should be rooting for (no shit), other than the fact that he's going home, he wastes his budget by going with his Boyfriend Joaquin Phoenix fools around after they dreamed of doing a Broadway musical together. Phillips is so uncertain in his vision that there is even meta-commentary on a joker A TV movie that, while considered bad by most, Arthur is always looking for confirmation of how great it was. Phillips made a phenomenal feature film five years ago, but perhaps was aware of it Joker: Folie à Deux exists for all the wrong reasons, throwing idea after idea at the wall in the hope that something, anything, will stick.