In the 1970s, Monty Python wrote a sketch called Adventures of Ralph Melish. With dramatic music setting the noirish tone, Michael Palin theatrically declaims: “Ralph Melish (…) was on his way to work as usual when… (da dum!) nothing happened. (…) No dismembered trunk of a man in his late fifties. No head in a bag. Nothing. Not a sausage.”
Something about these non-adventures finds echoes in Joker: Folie à Deux, Todd Phillips’s highly anticipated sequel to Joker. 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.
