It’s safe to say: the long-awaited follow-up to Todd Phillips’ 2019 film, Joker: Folie à Deux, has not set the cinematic universe alight.
Academy Award-winner Joaquin Phoenix returned as Arthur Fleck, while Lady Gaga stars as psychiatrist Dr Harleen Quinzel – best known as Harley Quinn.
Five years on from the release of the Oscar-winning Joker, the sequel has finally arrived. And this time around, the Batman franchise’s most notorious villain is singing his way around Gotham with Lady Gaga by his side.
The movie premiered at Venice Film Festival last month and was released in cinemas on Friday, October 4.
But the box office numbers are in and it is looking like the film is a historic fail.
Reviewers are also not very complimentary, with some labelling the film “dull”.
Here is what we know about the return of Joker to our screens.
What is the film about?
Joker was not intended to have a follow-up. The dark thriller showed Fleck, an aspiring comedian and clown with a mental illness, becoming increasingly unhinged after he loses access to his medication and his life falls apart. He turns to crime and learns to enjoy his new status within a criminal underworld.
After the first film’s success, production company Warner Bros gave the green light for a sequel. It is part of the comic book series DC Black – a darker sequence that does not run in the same universe as the 2022 film The Batman, where the Joker had a bit part at the end.
Folie à Deux refers to a delusion or mental illness shared by two people in close association.
But the film takes a decidedly different stylistic direction to its predecessor – it’s a Moulin Rouge-esque jukebox musical.
What have the reviews said?
The Evening Standard review gave the film a measly two stars out of a possible five and others were also not quick to sing the praises of the musical.
The Daily Beast said: “Joker: Folie à Deux is so bad and so boring it’s absolutely shocking.”
Meanwhile, The New York Post called it “pathologically unnecessary”, and Vanity Fair said: “Startlingly dull”.
Our reviewer Jo-Ann Titmarsh described the flick as “depressingly dull and plodding”, saying: “If we had had a bit more comic book action and a little less singing, this could have been a truly outstanding film. Alas, it is not.”
The review reads: “There is no frisson of excitement or sense of the madness taking control. Joker picked up the Golden Lion here in Venice in 2019. This year, Phillips will probably be returning home with nothing. Not a sausage.
“Joker: Folie à Deux picks up not long after the original ended. Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), aka the Joker, is incarcerated in a secure ward of Arkham Hospital. Horribly emaciated, his scapulae sticking out like broken wings from his back, Fleck shuffles from cell to recreation yard to communal room, earning cigarettes from the guards for telling jokes. He is no trouble to anyone and is thus allowed to attend group singing therapy, where he meets and falls hopelessly in love with fellow patient Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga).
“From then on, the film becomes Joker, the Musical! No emotion or thought can be expressed other than through the medium of song. I thought my dad had a tune for every occasion, but he was an amateur compared with Arthur and Harley.”
The Guardian added in their review: “Flopping at the box office, hated by the critics – could Joker: Folie à Deux possibly be any worse?”
How is it doing at the box office?
Not great. This film had a reported budget of around $200m dollars before taking advertising into account.
It flopped in its opening weekend before recording historically low box office figures in its second week.
The movie grossed $38m at the US box office in its opening weekend, far beneath previous predictions of hitting around the $50 to $70m range.The second weekend was even worse, earning just $7m in the US across 4,102 theatres. The 81 per cent drop is the steepest decline in history for a comic book movie, and among the steepest domestic declines for any movie.
