Joker: Folie a Deux is a sub-Rock of Ages jukebox musical tediously out of tune

You can do anything in musical cinema. A bunch of gangsters can shoot each other while performing precise dance choreography. A plant can proclaim its superiority and ferocity to a terrified Rick Moranis. Two vicious mermaids can joyously explore a supermarket for the first time while signing at the top of their lungs. Once you’ve embraced that you’re making a movie divorced from reality, all kinds of exciting creative possibilities open up. From Gentlemen Prefer Blondes to RRR, cinema's history is littered with superb musicals bursting with imagination.

Into this realm walks director Todd Phillips with the musical feature Joker: Folie a Deux, a sequel to 2019’s Joker. Musical movies can operate in many forms, but they cannot flourish in a self-conscious state. These titles simply must go full-on "The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat" lest they end like 2014's lame and dreary Jersey Boys film. Leave it to the man who rehashed the first Hangover movie for its 2011 sequel to ignore that reality. Rather than giving audiences a grand show, Joker: Folie a Deux plays things safe and timidly. While The People’s Joker earlier this year sparkled with anarchic and heartfelt energy, Joker: Folie a Deux is a lifeless creative operation.

Picking up after the events of Joker, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is imprisoned in Arkham Asylum. Now famous amongst the guard and his fellow inmates for his rampage, Fleck has resigned himself to living in quiet silence. Everything changes, though, when he meets another Arkham resident named Harleen Quinzel (Lady GaGa). That character's name, unfortunately, reflects Folie a Deux's bizarre self-consciousness. Throughout the film, Harley Quinn, already deprived of her Queens-ish accent and rambunctious personality, is only (save for one line from a psychologist) referred to as “Lee”.

It's a small detail emblematic of Folie a Deux’s eye-roll-worthy commitment to “realism”. Even the word “Harley” is now too ludicrous for Phillips. Busby Berkely and Bob Fosse are somewhere right now rolling their eyes at this man’s lack of confidence. The anarchic clown formerly known as Harley Quinn gets Fleck out of his funk and hopeful for the future. That’s good because Fleck is about to go on trial for his horrific crimes. Just as Fleck becomes prone to dream sequences where he and Lee sing and dance the night away, grim reality keeps crashing in through courtroom proceedings. Love hurts, as that one song declares. Maybe it can also be a balm for this tormented clown.

On paper, going the musical route for a Joker follow-up is an inspired choice. This approach could give this sequel a distinctive and bold identity. Tragically, though, Joker: Folie a Deux mimics the two Sing movies in demonstrating only partial commitment to the musical form. Songs here are often very short exercises boiled down to a single verse or crooned in voice-over. It’s like Phillips and Company can’t wait to get out of the musical numbers as soon as they begin.

Further frustratingly, Folie a Deux is an unimaginative jukebox musical. Even as someone whose life was changed by the Mamma Mia! movie, I’m not immune to the mixed track record of this style of musical. Often, they’re just exercises in brand management that remove chances for character exploration through music. Richly specific lyrics of classic Howard Ashman or Stephen Sondheimer songs are traded in for stage characters belting out Top 40 hits.

Joker: Folie a Deux is another weak jukebox musical drawing on a smattering of unimaginative tune choices for its musical numbers. Big swinging band ditties (mostly Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones, and Sammy Davis Jr. tracks) and 60s/70s pop tunes (“They Long to Be) Close to You”, “To Love Somebody”) dominate the soundtrack. They're all such thoroughly unimaginative choices audiences have seen in countless other movies and pop culture properties. “Close to You” belongs to The Simpsons, for one thing. Deploying Judy Garland's numbers like "Get Happy" in darker contexts is a form of "radical" juxtaposition that's been done to death. Heck, this isn't even the first time a DC Comics supervillain has harmonized a version of "That's Entertainment!" If Joker: Folie a Deux had to be a jukebox musical, couldn’t the song choices have been as unpredictable as the titular supervillain?

The lack of imaginative song choices paired with the frustratingly banal execution of the musical digressions. Joker: Folie a Deux channels classic musical movie sequences from Singin’ in the Rain and Oklahoma in having people belt out ditties in dream sequences. Such set pieces do allow for creative visuals from cinematographer Lawrence Sher and costume designer Arianne Phillips. Otherwise, they’re rote exercises devoid of truly outlandish creative decisions. Constantly putting a spotlight on our two leads against black backdrops quickly becomes a visual motif zapping individual personality from each set piece. The brevity of these numbers, meanwhile, instantly limits their potential impact. Save for some nice costumes and lighting, Joker: Folie a Deux’s musical numbers are a waste. All the bold possibilities of this storytelling style are washed away by pure laziness.

Something else hampering the musical numbers? Watch Joaquin Phoenix's Arthur Fleck somberly sing a classic “upbeat” song once and you’ve seen it a dozen times. It’s a problem distilling how lifeless Phoenix is in the entire movie. Not since Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels has initially striking acting devolved into tiresome dreck. Phoenix alternates between piling on the wacky attributes (like doing a Southern accent when Fleck works as his own lawyer) or just lifelessly murmuring lines about how much Fleck loves Lee. The former “silly” elements especially overstay their welcome basically the minute they begin.

These wildly disparate extremes in Phoenix’s performance can’t conceal how innately hollow his work is this go-around. Like Mia Goth in MaXXXine, Phoenix tries recapturing a lightning-in-a-bottle performance that thrived on how unexpected it was. You can’t make “I’m a star!” happen twice. Nor can you just make Phoenix’s Joker performance equally unnerving a second time around. Joker: Folie A Deux’s omnipresent obsession with Fleck means that the shallow nature of Phoenix’s performance is inescapable. The screen is constantly filled with derivative “quirky” gestures or shrieking laughs that faintly echo the past. All returning to Arthur Fleck did was make me desperately miss Joaquin Phoenix's earlier work. C’mon C’mon, The Master, Her, and You Were Never Really Here, these were masterful distinctive turns. Now he's just grabbing $20 million paydays to rehash the past.

Emphasizing Fleck so much means that Lady Gaga has little to do with this newest incarnation of Harley Quinn. Not since Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch, or David Harbour as Hellboy has seemingly surefire comic book movie casting gone this awry. That’s nothing to do with Gaga, though. She gives her meager character her all and shows off her fine pipes in the musical numbers. However, not even this icon can wring miracles out of a role this generically written.

She’s mostly asked to just sit silently in the back of a courtroom giving Joaquin Phoenix supportive gestures. Phillips is too scared to call this character Harley. It's no wonder he doesn't have the conviction to let her become a compellingly multi-faceted figure. The same performer who delightfully threw herself into unforgettably over-the-top House of Gucci line deliveries is asked in Folie a Deux to exude all the liveliness of a Steven Wright stand-up routine.

The lack of truly entertaining flaws, chaos, or personality handed to Gaga speaks to Joker: Folie a Deux's sluggishness. The timidity Phillips' movies have for women characters parallels this new musical’s dedication to tiptoeing around potentially provocative elements. Musical numbers are lifeless affairs leaning on audience nostalgia. These sequences reek of sweaty desperation to not alienate people who might think musicals are “weird” or “gay”. Thus, background dancers, original lyrics, and even lengthy bursts of singing are largely eschewed.

Truly unhinged visuals barely appear. Challenging political material or subversions of gender roles are similarly M.I.A. There’s nothing in here to make audiences squirm or gasp in shock. It’s just so boilerplate. Phillips resigned himself to just rehashing The Hangover for The Hangover: Part II. Now he’s made Joker: Folie a Deux a lifeless courtroom drama with occasional musical digressions and grating callbacks to its predecessor.

Despite the best efforts of artists like Gaga, Sher, Phillips, and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, Joker: Folie a Deux comes nowhere close to its Yorgos Lanthimos and Gene Kelly aspirations. By its final scenes, the proceedings so deeply lose any courageous creative instincts that there are two “cutesy” easter eggs signifying origins for famous Batman villains. Folie a Deux concludes by evoking standard comic book movie fare these Joker titles were supposedly subverting. Phoenix and Phillips lack the creative gusto needed to make a musical movie or a satisfying cinematic experience. Joker: Folie a Deux offers little but a 138-minute-long opportunity to realize the virtues of superior movie musicals.

Crave truly remarkable unhinged cinema crammed with great visuals? Treat yourself to a The Lure/The People’s Joker double feature. If you crave comic book villains crooning genuinely fun musical numbers, watch this performance of “A Freak Like Me Needs Company.” Want Gotham-centered cinema demonstrating actual creative commitment? Check out Joel Schumacher’s two Batman movies. Sorry fellow Lady Gaga devotees, but really is no shortage of superior options to experiencing Joker: Folie A Deux.