Image: “Joker: Folie à Deux” (2024) Movie Poster via IMDb
“Joker: Folie à Deux” was many people’s most anticipated movie of the year — including my own. When the first “Joker” came out back in 2019, people immediately wanted a second movie since the first “Joker” was just so damn good. Five years later, we got our wish. Most people wanted to know if the second movie would live up to the expectations since the first was mind-blowing (literally) and spectacular. Now let’s find out if “Joker: Folie à Deux” is a worthy sequel to “Joker.”
“Joker: Folie à Deux” finds Arthur Fleck institutionalized at Arkham, awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. While struggling with his dual identity, Fleck not only stumbles upon true love but also finds the music that’s always been inside him. This is a simple and obvious plot after the ending of “Joker.” What some people were confused about is that they announced the sequel was going to be a musical. Now it is a musical, yes, but this is not your typical musical. Without getting into spoilers, if you don’t like musicals you may still like this movie because of the direction and different aspects the movie takes with the musical genre. Now this movie has a lot of good things but some pretty consequential bad things as well. I want to talk about some of the major pros and cons of this movie to highlight the importance of them.
To start with the pros, it is a beautiful movie. The lighting, camera work and how all of the colors looked together: it was beautiful. I don’t believe there is a single shot in this movie I found to be ugly. Every shot puts you into the movie as if you were standing there and, in some cases, the shots themselves made you feel emotions without any dialogue needing to be used. The colors of the clothes throughout the movie were dark when in a darker setting, and really colorful and outgoing when in a brighter scene, and the contrast between the scenes made it really impactful. Another pro is the acting. Obviously, Joaquin Phoenix put on an amazing performance as he always does. Lady Gaga was surprisingly good at times, outperforming Phoenix with the crazier aspect of things, as you would expect from the Joker and Harley Quinn since they are insane, and Gaga delivered as if she were an insane person herself. A third pro is the music. Most of the music choices they use in the movie tells us what exactly is going through Joker’s head and some of the situations he is thinking about and singing about. None of the music choices they selected feel out of place, and they all align with the personalities and moods of Joker and Harley. I was very pleased with the music side of things in this movie. Overall, the pros were very strong in this movie and made the movie pop in its own way.
Now to switch to the cons. To begin, the music, which is a strong pro in this movie, is also a con. Even though it is technically a musical, I feel as if there were too many musical moments in this movie. It felt as if every five minutes in the movie, a new song would start playing and kill some of the momentum of the movie. The music sometimes killed some of the emotional parts of the movie. Yes, it elevated some emotional parts as well, but in my opinion it hurt the movie more than it helped it. Another con is the story itself. The plot is simple, yes, but nothing really happens. It is a slow movie, which isn’t a bad thing but doesn’t help with the little action this movie has. As well as the movie only concentrating on the trial itself and not expanding on more interesting storylines they could have expanded on with this movie. Finally, I did not like the ending to this movie. Without spoiling anything, it felt as if the last 15 minutes of the movie were underwhelming and didn’t add any excitement. The last decision in particular that they made with this movie is a weird decision, and I don’t really see why they did it. It made zero sense to me at all, and I was left disappointed with the ending.
Overall, the cons outweigh the pros of this movie. This is a good movie when you consider everything, but not a spectacular movie like most people expected it to be. If you liked the first “Joker,” then you should like “Joker: Folie à Deux” as well but not as much. To me “Joker” is a 9.5/10, and “Joker: Folie à Deux” is a 7.5/10. It was a good movie, but I was just disappointed with some of the decision-making they chose to go with.
Jackson Evans is a third-year Communications major with a minor in Journalism.