Joker: Folie a Deux (2024) Review – Misfire at Arkham

🦇 This review is part of the DC Elseworlds – explore the standalone Batman and Joker films.

When a film grosses over a billion dollars worldwide and wins two Academy Awards, the temptation to make a sequel is understandable. When the sequel grosses $58 million against a $200 million budget, receives a 31% on Rotten Tomatoes, and causes visible, widespread disappointment among audiences who had found genuine value in the original — that is not bad luck. That is a sequel that actively dismantled what made the original work.

Joker: Folie a Deux is a jukebox musical. Todd Phillips, having made a critically acclaimed Scorsese-inflected character study, decided to follow it with a film in which Arthur Fleck and Lee Quinzel express their emotional states through cover versions of classic American songs. In Arkham Asylum. While Arthur awaits trial for the six murders of the first film.

I went in wanting to like this film. I found the original genuinely affecting. I have rated Joaquin Phoenix at his best in anything he does. I was curious about Lady Gaga in what was her most demanding dramatic role since A Star Is Born. None of that goodwill survived contact with the musical sequences.

Rating: 5/10.

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The original film that made the sequel commercially possible. Still a genuinely excellent standalone character study. This is what you want to watch.

The Musical Conceit: Wrong Tool for the Job

The jukebox musical format is not inherently wrong. Used correctly — in La La Land, in Once, in the original Joker’s single scene of Arthur dancing freely on a staircase — music can express something that ordinary dramatic language cannot reach. That single staircase scene in the 2019 film is the closest the original gets to musical, and it is the best scene in the film precisely because it captures Arthur’s fleeting, fragile experience of freedom.

Folie a Deux attempts to build an entire film on that principle, and fails because it misunderstands why the original scene worked. The staircase works because it is one moment of liberation in a film of unrelenting constriction. The jukebox musical sequences in Folie a Deux do not function as liberation; they substitute for dramatic content the film hasn’t built.

When Arthur and Lee dance to “That’s Entertainment!” in Arkham, we are not watching a character moment. We are watching an empty spectacle inserted where a character moment should be. The songs are not expressing the inexpressible; they are filling space the screenplay has left vacant.

The film’s structure divides between two registers: the legal procedural of Arthur’s trial, and the fantasy musical sequences. The legal procedural is genuinely interesting. Arthur’s defence attorney argues diminished responsibility — the Joker is a separate personality, Arthur Fleck is not responsible for what the Joker did. The prosecutor argues premeditation. The public gallery is split between those who want Arthur executed and those who have made the Joker a symbol of anti-establishment anger. These are real questions, dramatically and philosophically, about what the character actually is and what the mythology the original film created means.

Every time those questions get interesting, the film cuts to a song.

What Phoenix and Gaga Bring

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The disc release for the curious or the completionist. Worth watching once if you want to form your own view.

Joaquin Phoenix is still Joaquin Phoenix. In the sequences where the film permits Arthur Fleck to exist in his 2019 register — particularly in the trial scenes and in the climactic third-act sequence where Arthur publicly and definitively disavows the Joker identity — he is as committed, as precise, and as physically inhabited as before. The scenes where Arthur realises that Lee loves the Joker mythology and not the man inside it are the film’s most honest work, and Phoenix is doing everything the material asks of him.

Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel is the better version of a character than the film that contains her. Gaga is a genuinely capable dramatic actress. Her Lee is constructed around an interesting idea: a woman who has fallen in love with a symbol, discovered that the man behind the symbol is nothing like the projection, and has to decide what to do with that knowledge. That story exists in Folie a Deux — it surfaces clearly in the third act — and it is the most interesting thing in the film.

It exists alongside, and in competition with, approximately four full-length jukebox musical numbers per act.

Brendan Gleeson as Jackie Sullivan — Arthur’s Arkham cell block bully, a brute who functions as a daily reminder that even in Arkham the strong exploit the weak — is the film’s most consistently effective supporting presence, largely by being the only character operating in a single register throughout.

What the Original Built, the Sequel Dismantled

The first Joker worked because it committed entirely to its register. It was a Scorsese-inflected character study from the first frame to the last, with one consistent tonality and one consistent argument. No deviations. No genre pivots. The discomfort the film created came from that commitment: you were in Arthur Fleck’s world for two hours with no relief.

Folie a Deux breaks the register with every musical sequence. Each song cuts you out of the film’s dramatic world and inserts you into a different tonal space. When the song ends, the drama resumes — but the spell is broken. The anxiety and claustrophobia that made the first film physically affecting cannot survive repeated interruption by show-stopping numbers.

There is a more defensible version of Folie a Deux as a critical act: a film that deliberately dismantles the Joker mythology, that denies the audience the catharsis the original seemed to promise, that insists Arthur Fleck is not heroic and never was. That reading is available. The problem is that “intentionally disappointing” and “worth watching” are not the same thing, and a thesis film about the emptiness of the Joker mythos is cold comfort when the alternative was a great sequel.

Do I need to watch Joker (2019) before Joker: Folie a Deux?

Yes. Folie a Deux begins directly after the events of the original and expects you to know who Arthur Fleck is, what he did, and why he is in Arkham. Without the first film, none of the emotional weight of the trial, Lee’s obsession, or Arthur’s eventual disavowal of the Joker identity is accessible.

Is Joker: Folie a Deux a musical?

Yes, partially. The film intercuts Arthur Fleck’s trial with jukebox musical sequences featuring classic American songs. It is the sequel’s defining creative choice and its most divisive element. Audiences who expected a continuation of the original’s register were disappointed; the box office reflects that response accurately.

Who plays Harley Quinn in Joker: Folie a Deux?

Lady Gaga plays Lee Quinzel, positioned as the Harley Quinn origin in this continuity. She is a fellow Arkham patient obsessively invested in the Joker mythology. Gaga is committed and the character concept is interesting; the film does not give her character the space it deserves.

Is Joker: Folie a Deux worth watching?

Once, to form your own view. Not repeatedly. The film has real elements — Phoenix’s commitment, the legal procedural sequences, the third act’s honesty about the Joker mythology. None of it outweighs the fundamental damage done by the musical format to the film’s tonal coherence. If you loved the original, approach with significantly managed expectations.

How does Joker: Folie a Deux connect to the DC universe?

It does not. Like its predecessor, Folie a Deux is a standalone Elseworlds film with no connection to either the old DCEU or James Gunn’s new DC Universe. The story begins and ends with Arthur Fleck, self-contained, with no franchise obligations in either direction.