Highly anticipated after the success of the first part, “Joker: Folie à deux” tells the continuation of the adventures of the Gotham City psychopath. What is the sequel worn by Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, in theaters this Wednesday, October 2, worth?
That’s it, the most anticipated film of this 2024 school year has been released. Since this Wednesday, October 2, the public can go to cinemas to discover Joker: Folie à deuxsequel to Todd Phillips’ hit film. Joaquin Phoenix is back in the guise of Gotham City’s ultra-violent clown in prison and awaiting trial, this time accompanied by Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn.
Unsurprisingly, Joker: Folie à deux divides the critics, who generally seem to have remained unsatisfied. At the time of its screening at the Venice Film Festival, it received an average score of 54/100 on Meta Critic. On Rotten Tomatoes, with 51 reviews, the rating stands at 63% positive reviews. If Lady Gaga’s performance or the visual qualities of the film are praised, the rest divides the American and French press more widely. Le Parisien speaks of a “stunning” film in which Lady Gaga “breaks the screen”, Télérama salutes the “thunderous couple” formed by the two actors in this “paced sequel which mixes melodrama, trial story and musical comedy. “
But Le Monde criticizes the film for not showing “great inventiveness” and offers an “uneven show”. For Première, “this sequel to Joker, in the form of a depressive musical, is so dreary and ineffective that it almost resembles a complete scuttling on the part of Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix”, when Le Point considers that “the fire does not never takes” and that the film “lacks madness”. Les Numériques, for its part, welcomes the film’s ambition to “dismantle everything that the original film created and to go against the public’s expectations” in a “kamikaze sequel delivered with panache, but without substance”.
As for the English-speaking press, it is hardly more convincing. The Independent calls it an “ingenious and deeply disturbing film,” while IGN deplores “its untapped potential” in a sequel that “tells nothing new.” This second episode “is a boring and uninteresting film” for Vanity Fair, “a little light and even sometimes bland” for The Hollywood Reporter. Variety believes for its part that the concept of the opposite mixing of genres, as “bold” as it is, “is not well executed in this film”. But as is often the case with cinema, it is the public who will have the last word in determining whether the success will exceed that of the first part. Regardless, director Todd Phillips has made it clear there will be no sequel.
Synopsis – Sequel to the film Joker (2019). Interned in Arkham Asylum, Arthur Fleck/The Joker is on trial for five murders. He decides to defend himself while he forms a relationship with psychiatrist Harley Quinn.