Joker: Folie à Deux Reviews: What Critics Are Saying About the Sequel

• “Joker: Folie à Deux” hits theaters on Friday.
• Joaquin Phoenix returns to play the Joker and Lady Gaga plays his lover Harley Quinn.
• The film has been heavily panned by critics and has a score of 36% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Five years after “Joker” became a sensation, grossing over $1 billion and earning Joaquin Phoenix an Oscar for his portrayal of the DC Comics villain, director Todd Phillips is back for the sequel “Joker: Folie à Deux.” Phoenix worked together.

As in the original, Phoenix delivers a depressingly grounded portrait of Arthur Fleck, this time as the character awaits trial for the murders he committed in the first film. The second time around, he also has a love interest: Lady Gaga's Lee Quinzel, a fellow inmate at Arkham Asylum who is fascinated by the headline-grabbing antics that propelled Fleck to fame.

The film is part courtroom drama, part musical. Yes, you heard right: the second Joker film is a musical. But so far there has been no applause from critics. At the time of publication, Folie à Deux had a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 36%.

That's bad news for Warner Bros. The Joker sequel, which had a budget of just under $200 million, is expected to gross around $50 million at the domestic box office in its opening weekend, a far cry from the $96 million it took on opening weekend of the first film, which was a record for an October release. Needless to say, it's unlikely WB will have another billion-dollar earner here.

(Still, don't feel bad for the studio: It currently has three titles in the top 10 highest-grossing films of 2024: “Dune: Part Two,” “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.” “.”)

Here's a sampling of what critics think about Joker: Folie à Deux, in theaters now.

It's a sequel about nothing

The biggest criticism of “Folie à Deux” is that it is about Nothing.

It could have been a prison break movie or a full musical, but Phillips decided to have Arthur Fleck sit in the courtroom and rehash the events of the first film.

Nick Schager of The Daily Beast summed it up when he compared his viewing experience to a famous show about nothing.

“'Joker: Folie à Deux' is often reminiscent of the series finale of 'Seinfeld' in that it puts its main character on trial for his past misdeeds,” he wrote. “It's a crime to make the DC Comics icon so lackluster and to neuter Phoenix's tense creepiness through endless psychoanalysis.”

“Folie à Deux” really is a musical – just not a good one

From the moment the first footage from “Folie à Deux” was shown at CinemaCon in April, Phillips was coy about the sequel being a musical, promising that “everything will make sense when you watch it sees.”

To most critics it made no sense.

“'Folie à Deux' simply dances in place for most of its listless running time, stringing together a series of disappointing musical numbers that are either too intrusive to convey something Arthur couldn't express without them, or too vague to do so “It's impossible for his characters to express anything at all,” wrote IndieWire's David Ehrlich.

Deadline's Pete Hammond was one of the few critics who appreciated the musical numbers, calling them “artful”.

“With singing, dancing, comedy, darkness, animation, drama, violence and more, this is a musical – if anything.” Is a musical – like no other,” he wrote.

In what could hardly be called a compliment, TIME's Stephanie Zacharek noted that the musical numbers at least had more to offer than the rest of the film.

“The musical interludes in 'Folie à Deux' – particularly the candy-colored fantasy sequences – are the most lively thing about it, although they're not even enough to break the film out of its dour lockstep,” she wrote.

However, like most critics, Johnny Oleksinski of the New York Post is confused about Phoenix and Gaga's musical styles.

“Phillips, clearly dreaming of working for MGM in the 1940s, somehow saw this as a logical opportunity for the couple to perform songs on the scale of a Broadway musical—some 15 in all,” he wrote. “The choice is reminiscent of a song by 'Miss Saigon': 'Why, God, Why?'”

They didn't have to do Lady Gaga like that

Lady Gaga is one of the few actresses who can convincingly hold her own against Phoenix's unpredictable Joker. Critics were therefore particularly disappointed that their talents were underutilized.

Vulture's Alison Willmore said the film was a “waste of her presence”.

“In its unrelenting darkness, 'Folie à Deux' sends Gaga into a visiting booth where she tries to pretend she can't blow away the Plexiglas walls with her rendition of '(They Long to Be) Close to You,'” she wrote .

But The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney points out in his review that there's a reason Phillips doesn't let her go full Gaga.

“Because Lee is not supposed to be a polished singer, Gaga mutes her vocals to a rough, raspy sound,” he wrote. “But in the few scenes where the imagination frees her in all its glory, the film resonates with her.”

Regardless, Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson found Gaga's performance “shockingly boring.”

“Their presence suggested something large, sociable and universally accessible, which attracted those who might have been alienated by Joker's dark vision of lonely, heterosexual male rage,” he wrote.

“She is completely underused, her role merely acting as an emissary from Arthur’s followers to prove that women’s attention is fleeting and conditional,” Lawson continued. “Phillips scoffs at the idea that Lee could ever truly love someone like Arthur. Ultimately, she comes across as a moody creature who can’t stand the real truth of a man.”

It's definitely not a film for the fans

Critics pointed out that Phillips seems to be doing the opposite of fan service at every turn, essentially burning down the goodwill he built with fans of the first film.

“There are many scenes where Arthur is dressed as the Joker, defending himself in the courtroom, singing the odd chestnut, sometimes in fantasy numbers that could almost be taking place in his head. But there is no longer any danger to his presence. He's not.” He's trying to kill someone and he's not leading a revolution. “He sings and (occasionally) dances his way into his Joker daydream,” wrote Variety’s Owen Gleiberman.

“He’s a nobody,” wrote the BBC’s Nicholas Barber about the character Arthur Fleck. “Depending on how you look at it, this demythologizing exercise is either daring or irritatingly smug, but it's definitely not much fun. Phillips seems to be saying that if you fell in love with Fleck's messianic self-image last time, then the joke is on you.”

“With 'Slide for two,' “Phillips gives fans a punishment that essentially punishes them for enjoying the fleeting energy of the first film,” concluded TIME’s Zacharek. “It’s more of a corrective than a sequel, a go-direct-to-jail card in film form.”