It has been five years since the controversial DC villain film Joker became a billion-dollar success for Warner Bros. Now Todd Phillips is back with the hotly anticipated sequel, which, to the surprise of some comic fans, musical has become.
In addition to Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, pop goddess Lady Gaga also stars as Harleen Quinzel aka Harley Quinn, who falls head over heels for the sick clown in Joker 2: Folie à deux. However, international critics are not quite so blown away by the whole thing. At least not across the board.
No joke: Joker 2 only receives mixed reviews
The Joker psychiatric musical currently has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 60 percent and a Metacritic score of just 54. Absolute negative reviews make up less than 10 percent, with most reviews landing somewhere in the middle, while there are also some defenders of the film.
In her positive review, film critic Rafaela Sales Ross of The Playlist attributes a pleasant self-perception to the DC film in the cultural context:
Of all the things Phillips does better in Joker: Folie à deux than in Joker, his Course correction in dealing with radical misogynists by far the best. The director is not subtle in his references to the controversy sparked by the original.
Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair is less enthusiastic, and may make Joker fans his archenemy:
Anyone who hoped that a sequel to Joker would be about the newly minted villain wreaking havoc in his city will be sorely disappointed by Folie à deux. Phillips has essentially banished us to two places: the asylum and the courthouse. Very little happens outside of these walls, which reduces the film to a tense psycho-drama. It is astonishingly boring, a pointless procedurewhich seems to despise its audience.
Peter Bradshaw of the British Guardian puts it more diplomatically, also noting an improvement on the first part:
Now the sequel is here, and while it ends up being just as garish, laborious, and often completely tedious as the first film, there is one improvement. It’s a musical of sorts, with Phoenix and others warbling show tunes, often in fantasy set pieces […]. This gives it structure and flair that the first film didn’t have.
Our Moviepilot editor-in-chief Jenny Jecke also highlighted both positive and negative aspects in her review of the Venice Film Festival. While she is a big fan of newcomer Gaga and Arthur’s more complex characterization, she thinks the film doesn’t quite keep its own promise:
However, a basic problem of the predecessor remains and it cannot be wiped away so easily. Neither the script nor the craftsmanship can fully meet the demands. The musical sequences are beautifully set, but are captured relatively slowly and statically. This looks good in trailers, but sometimes brings the film to a standstill.When can we see Joker 2 in the cinema?
Only four weeks separate local non-critics from the regular cinema release of Joker 2: Folie à deux. October 3, 2024 The musical DC film starts.