‘Joker: Folie À Deux’: The Most Positive And Negative Reviews
by Tim Lammers · ForbesJoaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga’s Joker: Folie à Deux isn’t getting much love from movie critics in reviews about the sequel to 2019’s Joker.
Joker: Folie à Deux played in Thursday previews before opening in theaters nationwide on Friday. The film, of course, follows the blockbuster success of the original Joker, which grossed over $1 billion worldwide—a first for an R-rated movie—and earned a Best Actor Oscar for Phoenix.
Director Todd Phillips’ sequel, like the original Joker, is once again framed as a crime drama, but this movie comes with a twist since it has jukebox musical elements.
Set two years after the events of the first film, Arthur Fleck/Joker (Phoenix) is in Gotham’s Arkham Asylum awaiting trial for the murders he committed in the original Joker.
While in the asylum, Arthur meets Lee Quinzel/Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga) in a music class and the two immediately fall in love. As such, the couple plots their escape from Arkham before Arthur’s murder case goes to trial.
Rotten Tomatoes critics reviewing the film out of the Venice International Film Festival after its world premiere on September 4 were fairly complimentary of Joker: Folie à Deux, giving the film a 60% “fresh” rating out of 43 reviews.
Now that reviews have come out en masse, however, Rotten Tomatoes critics’ reactions to Joker: Folie à Deux are a lot worse. As of Friday, the film has received a 37% “rotten” rating based on 185 reviews on RT.
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The RT Critics’ Consensus for the film reads, “Joaquin Phoenix's eponymous Joker takes the stand in a sequel that dances around while the story remains still, although Lady Gaga's wildcard energy gives Folie á Deux some verve.”
Viewers seem to have the exact same feeling about Joker: Folie à Deux. Currently, the RT Audience Score for the film is 37% “rotten” based on 500-plus verified user ratings.
By contrast, 2019’s Joker received a 68% “fresh” rating from RT critics based on 602 reviews and a 89% “fresh” Audience Score based on more than 50,000 verified user ratings.
How Did Individual Critics Rate ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’?
Brian Truitt of USA Today is among the few critics on Rotten Tomatoes who gave Joker: Folie à Deux a positive review on Thursday when most of the critiques were published.
In his review, Truitt writes, “Anyone familiar with Batman comic-book lore knows Joker and Harley have their extreme ups and downs, and it’s enjoyable here to watch Arthur and Lee’s bad romance come to fruition.”
Jason Gorber of Paste Magazine also had positive things to say about the film, writing, “A boldly unconventional blockbuster that feels at once as disposable as any, yet has these tiny, almost irritating threads that when pulled upon reveal method to the madness. In this day and age, it seems, that’s entertainment.”
Of course, the negative reviews of Joker: Folie à Deux on RT were far more prevalent than the positive ones.
Among them is a scathing critique by G. Allen Johnson from the San Francisco Chronicle, who writes, “Joker: Folie à Deux is a traumatizing cinematic experience, so insistent on being grim and static that one wonders if director Todd Phillips’ goal was to set fire to the whole idea of a comic book movie.”
In his takedown of the film, Nick Schrager of The Daily Beast notes that Joker: Folie à Deux is “so determined to avoid satisfying fans that it’s borderline antagonistic, as actively hostile to genre conventions as its protagonist is to the world at large.”
Also, in Rafer Guzman’s writes in his zero out of four stars review for Newsday that Joker: Folie à Deux is “a listless, depressing ‘musical’ that seems to hate its characters, and itself.”
New York Post critic Johnny Oleksinski gives the Joker sequel one star out of four, writing, “For nearly two and a half hours, director Todd Phillips’ pathologically unnecessary movie cycles through so many potential reasons to exist ... it ultimately never finds a satisfying one.”
Rated R, Joker: Folie à Deux opens Friday in theaters nationwide.