Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie à Deux. Photo: Supplied
There's some unseemly glee online about the box office fate of the new Joker movie, Folie à Deux.
After a low-energy opening weekend, estimates are that it will end up with a theatrical gross of less than 25 percent of the original's $US1bn, on a budget almost four times as big ($US200m).
Media are blaming filmmaker hubris.
Folie à Deux is a much bigger film with a much lower impact. It's twenty minutes longer than the original, but there's about half as much plot and some set-pieces go on too long while lines of dialogue are often repeated unnecessarily. It falls short of its number one mission which is to keep us interested.
But I can't help but feel that there is some karma in effect this time - that studio Warner Bros. Discovery is suffering because, on one hand, they've allowed the sacred Looney Tunes logo and music to be used for an opening animated flashback sequence (created by Sylvain Chomet), while at the same time the studio chose to trash the Road Runner movie Coyote vs. Acme for the tax write-off, never to be seen by an audience.
So, what to make of Joker: Folie à Deux, then.
A sequel to the phenomenally successful gritty reimagining of the DC comics supervillain origin story - a film that won Oscars for Joaquin Phoenix (Best Actor) and Hildur Guðnadóttir (Best Score) who both return along with the gifted cinematographer Lawrence Sher - it takes two big swerves away into a new direction.
Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie à Deux. Photo: Supplied
It introduces Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel, some actual love interest for Phoenix's lonely monster Arthur Fleck. And the filmmakers decided to illustrate the inner lives of the characters, and their relationship, by giving them songs to sing and dance to.
I don't have a problem with any of that, at least conceptually. I can also accept that they are sung in character which means that Gaga's powerful voice doesn't get its full expression and that Phoenix's limitations in the singing and dancing department match his character's.
I watched Joker for the first time this weekend as homework and proximity makes them more interesting than I expected.
This is a pair of films that tries to portray mental illness, and society's cavalier attitude towards it, with some sympathy and that sympathy can be uncomfortable.
The filmmakers decided to illustrate the inner lives of the characters by giving them songs to sing and dance to. Photo: Supplied
While Joker was all about causes - childhood abuse, bullying, generational trauma - the new movie is about consequences.
Arthur Fleck/Joker is about to go to trial for his crimes and his lawyer, played by Catherine Keener, is determined that proof of mental incapacity will keep him from the death penalty and urges him to play up that aspect of his story.
But, of course, both sides of that argument can be true at the same time.
Joker was clearly insane at the end of the first film but the Arthur Fleck we meet in Arkham Asylum at the beginning of part II knows what he has done and seems prepared to accept his fate.
All of this is helped tremendously by Phoenix's compassionate commitment to both truths.
It's the arrival of Quinzel that tips Fleck over the edge once more, an example of both films' deep-seated misogyny as she turns out to be a toxic combination of super-fan and manipulative gold-digger.
She's insinuated herself into Arkham in order to meet the Joker and intends to use his infamy as a springboard for her own. (In other versions of this story she becomes Harley Quinn and her partnership with Joker is nothing but trouble for the Batman.)
This morning I read a terrific article in the Spinoff about New Zealand's inadequate care for those suffering from mental illness and how easily people fall through the cracks of a well-intentioned system.
I found myself thinking about Phoenix as Fleck and his portrait of an abused and traumatised little boy turned into a lonely and brutalised little man. About how his treatment is limited to a cocktail of dulling drugs and yet more abuse.
I'm probably reading too much into this but I do think, once all the fuss about the box office and the inane reckons about how audiences don't want musicals has died down, we might find that there is more to these two films than meets the eye, even though director Todd Phillips and co-screenwriter Scott Silver do lay it all on a bit thick.
Sadly, this Joker overplays its hand.
A version of this review first appeared in Dan's newsletter, Funerals & Snakes. Joker: Folie à Deux is rated R16, Violence, sex scenes, suicide & content that may disturb.
