Joker Folie a Deux Reactions No Joke

Joker Folie a Deux finally screened in Venice. The reactions are slightly different from the first time around when it wowed audiences and ended up winning the Golden Lion. But a lot has happened since 2019, that’s for sure. 2020 changed everything in Hollywood. So it’s not surprising, I guess, it would have changed Joekr too.

What to make of it? Well, I guess it’s probably out for the Oscar race. The first one was nominated alongside 1917, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman and Parasite. Guns, violence, toxic masculinity — it was all dropped into the bubbling cauldron of “the discourse” that year. And then there was the dreaded word: incels.

So did all of that make Todd Philips feel guilty? Or is it like trying to wind back the clock and hope that no incels watched his film and identified with the character? Or was it meant to be kind of like what the King of Comedy was to Taxi Driver? A somewhat campy black musical/comedy?

I’m not sure. What did the critics think? It’s percolating at 60% on RT right now.  My favorite paragraph comes courtesy of David Ehlrich at IndieWire who writes:

As someone who believes that “The Hangover” sequels are the only truly evil things Phillips has ever made, and maintains that  “Joker” was less dangerous for the ambivalence of its morals than it was for the obviousness of its success (my 2019 review was preoccupied with the semi-genuine fear that Hollywood would be inspired to costume the rest of its output in comic book lore), I was mostly annoyed that Phillips wanted to have his cake and eat it too. In that light, I suppose I should be delighted that his inevitable follow-up is so eager to vomit that same cake back up all over the screen — all over his fans and his critics alike. It must have been making Phillips sick to his stomach, because “Joker: Folie à Deux” is nothing if not a full-throated repudiation of the idea that its “hero” should be embraced as a symbol instead of pitied (or hugged) as a man.

He also writes:

Here is a movie that perversely denies audiences everything they’ve been conditioned to want from it; gently at first, and then later with the unmistakable hostility of a knife to the gut. And that, more than anything else, is why “Folie à Deux” adopts the form of a classic musical: Because no other genre makes it so easy to appreciate all the fun you’re not having. This is blockbuster filmmaking as a form of collective punishment, but unlike “Borderlands,” “Deadpool,” and so much else of what Hollywood has pumped into theaters this year, “Folie à Deux” doesn’t feel like it ever intended to be anything else. 

Hostility for his audience? Why? What in the world did the audience ever do to Todd Phillips? I will have to see the film to assess it — but what’s clear is that if even the fans don’t like it, how in the world will Oscar voters?

Let’s try a more positive take. Let’s take Pete Hammond who really likes almost everything. He writes:

Phillips likely could not have foretold the explosion of the musical form in unexpected ways this season, but with The End, Better Man, Emelia Perez and Piece by Piece all exciting Telluride audiences over the weekend, it is clear that the genre is igniting a new era of innovation. Phillips, with today’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where the 2019 Joker took the Golden Lion, has added his own voice to its evolution. With song, dance, comedy, darkness, animation, drama, violence and more, this is a musical — if it even is a musical — like no other.

That’s entertainment, too.

 Says Time Out:

Joker 2 feels both like a continuance and a reaction to its own success, with Harleen standing for the kind of superfan who is willing to stan Joker at all costs. Fleck himself is a more pitiable figure and the film has some longueurs as it refuses to take some obvious escape routes.

So that’s really it. This is about guilt and remorse over the first film, perhaps, or the entire superhero genre, perhaps, or the entire male population, maybe?   Has he made a movie that wants people to feel bad about watching it? Bad for wanting to see violence and mayhem? Some kind of remorse over Trump? I am not sure. Hopefully, I will see it for myself and write about it.