When Joker was released in 2019, I wasn’t entirely sure of the hype. A Golden Lion winning film from Hangover and Starsky & Hutch director Todd Phillips? That didn’t really fit into my head. When I saw the film in the cinema, I felt confirmed in this assumption. Then it came out this year Joker 2: Folie à Deux and I was simply thrilled.
Many people tore him apart – Joker 2 convinced me with his willingness to take risks
While Phillip’s first film boasted extremely high ratings – for example an 8 out of 10 on Moviepilot itself – Joker 2 failed mercilessly. A 5.1 on Moviepilot, only 45 out of 100 points on the review portal Metacritic, only 31 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. What the audience expected was Joker and Harley Quinn, who terrorize Gotham as a crazy psycho couple – as they really show it to the world that spat them out. This couldn’t be further away from the final film.
In an interview with Variety earlier this year, Phillips revealed that the goal of the sequel was to “that it feels like it was made by crazy people.” The result was one wonderfully unconventional film. Joker 2 is both a musical and a courtroom drama, a media satire like a prison film. The film is in the best possible way all over the place and cares little about the expectations placed on him.
Lady Gaga speaks to Variety:
Todd worked with this concept and the script leaned very far out the window and gave the sequel to Joker that boldness and complexity. […] It is a testimony to [Todd] As a director, he prefers to be creative rather than just tell a traditional love story.
I can enthusiastically agree on all points. I would much rather have a bold director than an expected one.
After that, I discovered completely new qualities in Todd Phillip’s other films
Equipped with this newfound enthusiasm for the work of Todd Phillips I watched more of his films. These are mostly slapstick comedies. I kept discovering things that excited me about Joker 2. This includes Phillip’s feeling for beautiful image compositions, a superb soundtrack that can easily keep up with Tarantino in terms of song selection, and always that special touch of madness.
I liked his Starsky & Hutch remake from 2004 even before my new Phillips enthusiasm. But this left me completely discover new qualities of film. So this is undeniably a slapstick comedy typical of the time with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson in top form (Stillers “Do it” still makes me laugh to this day). But it’s also Phillips’ own love letter to 1970s television and cinema, and early proof of the joy he takes in subverting expectations.
Instead of delivering an accurate series adaptation, he prefers to show us in one sequence how the two undercover cops charm a sleazy con man played by Will Ferrell in order to get important information. But Phillips wouldn’t be Phillips if he didn’t think about that too. At the very end of the film we see how the original series duo hands over their legendary Ford Gran Torino to the film duo in a kind of baton passing. I love this quirky meta-humor.
The Hangover 3 is Todd Phillips’ secret masterpiece
Todd Phillips is of course best known for his three Hangover films, even though many fans of the series can’t stand the third part. The trilogy takes the director’s game with expectations to the extreme. The fun of surprises is finally declared the basic principle here.
Hangover 3 from 2013 deserves a special mention. The opening sequence alone with a decapitated giraffe is so absurd, funny and disturbing that I really had to wonder if I had ever seen something like this in a blockbuster film.
But that’s not enough. A hostage transfer in the desert breathes Scorsese’s masterpiece Casino to such an extent that you almost feel like you’re in a real mafia film. And as the raucous final chord of Nine Inch Nails Hurt After a long night of violence, while the film has just treated us to beautiful desert shots, all you think is: The fun is over, but the madness is far from over. And that’s exactly where Todd Phillips is now in his career.
Phillips has been there for almost 30 years now, “Beat the house”as Robert Downey Jr. once put it to Variety. Since Hangover he has been one of Hollywood’s top directors. Like many others of his caliber, he doesn’t let the fun of provocation and surprise be taken away from him. He impressively demonstrated this with Joker 2. That chutzpah makes him mine Director of the year!