Joker Folie À Deux
A playlist not worth watching, Joker Folie À Deux misses the punchline.
I like some of the Gaga songs, WTF does she know about Joker?
Arthur Fleck is a legendary character, several awards and made a generation of forgotten people feel seen (Me, I’m cooked). Only a few movies a year move the public from their overused left cushioned couches to the beautiful, funky carpet having, popcorn smelling theaters. In 2019, we swarmed theaters for showtimes for Joker. But this year, we chose to save our money and trust in Rotten Tomatoes. Low scores and green tomatoes? Say the line Magic.
Fuck it, I love film too much not to indulge and witness this for myself. We’ve all had one bad day and wanted to have the balls to be like the Joker. So I owe it to the writers of the first masterpiece to witness the second one. I get to the theaters and see this Looney Tunes format of Joker and I begin to get excited, maybe the critics were wrong. This is a masterpiece in the making, I mean Joker as a cartoon? Can I expect a spin off 😳? Then we return to reality …which is hard to depict when dealing with Arthur Fleck’s constant delusions. But this must be reality, Arthur could hula hoop through a Cheerio, dreary colors, and of course…that score from Hildur Guðnadóttir. It’s fitting, it’s Joker. He’s back.
Fair warning: the reviews were right…there is just too much singing in this movie. Once Gaga comes in, I felt like Karen Carpenter returned as Gaga to sing the timeless hit “Close to you” (perfectly written song, why can’t artist do that these days?). The singing isn’t horrid at first, feels like just a few key songs and it’s all alright. But then like attempting to stop a flood with duct tape, it became too much. Every serious moment I felt attached to the story, suddenly it’s time to sing about the previous scene. Instead of watching Joker Folie à Deux, I felt like I was in a nice tuxedo front row at a broadway musical. They look cute together, two insane people (like most of these relationships these days) in an insane asylum, nice. But this was a little forced and the only thing that kept me in the theater was my respect for Joaquin Phoenix. Someone behind me did suck their teeth and walk out, don’t blame you brother, but you did it 5 minutes before the end of the movie so your hate wasn’t great enough.
I am not sure who to blame for the theatrics for this film and of course somewhere down the line, it will probably rise to bad cult film lovers and say it was good, but it wasn’t. This actually disappointed me and its Swiss cheese thanks to too many songs. We got too far away from Arthur Fleck’s madness and too close to Gaga’s voice. This film is an easy “wait till it comes to Netflix” out of 10. An honest rating for this film would be below a 5/10 and that’s pretty bad. Save your money for the movie date and go do 2 for 20 at Applebees if that still exist in todays hyperinflation.
