It’s a battle of the clowns here today as we take a look at two recent in the surprisingly relevant genre of murderous clowns. Whatever you can say about their relative qualities, both the Joker and Terrifier series are there to throw a wrench into the conventional wisdom about what makes a blockbuster franchise, and both have found much more success than anyone was expecting. Still, following up a big hit is no easy task, especially for the one that somehow made a billion dollars, so do these two sequels manage to outdo the originals, and which one does the most with its killer clown setup? Let’s find out!!

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Joker: Folie à Deux

Joker: Folie à deux is owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by Todd Phillips

Hapless serial killer Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is not the man he used to be.  His time in prison has sapped all the maniacal energy that he brought to his one and only TV appearance, and is simply waiting for his trial to be done with so he can sit in a corner until his execution.  That is until he happens to pass by another inmate named Harley (Lady Gaga) who awakens the clown within and the two start planning for one heck of a legal defense.  Will this be the grand finale to the revolution that he kicked off, or is there more going on in Arthur’s mind than what he paints on his face?

Like a lot of critics, I was no fan of the first film, which was a tedious slog through half-baked social commentary. I’m glad to report that the sequel is an improvement, by being a tedious slog through half-baked social commentary with a few song and dance numbers. Well, that’s a bit unfair, I suppose. The movie improves upon the original in several ways that don’t just include the singing and dancing, and it all has to do with the film’s tighter focus. Arthur Fleck in the first movie was a mere cipher as the film was more interested in trying to make a point, whatever that point ultimately was, rather than making it about Arthur himself. Gotham City wound up taking far too much space in the last one, and thankfully things have been stripped down significantly, as everything outside of Arthur’s immediate circumstances barely has a presence here; one that we can only glimpse through the bars of his cell or the gallery of the courtroom. I’d go so far as to say there’s barely more than three sets in the entire film, and while I can’t imagine how they spent two hundred million on this, I applaud them for making the sequel smaller instead of succumbing to Big Sequel Syndrome. This is all a great start and put me in a better mood than I was in the last film, but that goodwill started to fade away as the plot kicked in, and it’s just as boring and meandering this time around. It certainly tries to liven things up with the toxic relationship between Arthur and Harley as well as the more frequent flights into fantasy, and is almost enough to carry the movie; even outside the context of this being tangentially related to the DC Universe. For the most part I’m not bothered by how little this cares to be anything like the Batman characters, but I will say that it’s a little bit uncomfortable for this to essentially turn Harley, who is a victim of Joker’s abuse in all other forms of media, into the manipulative one. The last one had its issues with women and those aren’t improved here, which is a shame because Gaga remains a compelling actor even in material that isn’t up to her level, and I feel that her character is far too underwritten to have the impact that the film clearly expects it to have. The same is true about the musical numbers, which aren’t a detriment to the movie, but they add almost nothing to the movie. I think it was a good idea for the two of them to connect through music, but the numbers themselves are not interesting enough to justify stopping the plot in its tracks, and it’s just another thing that makes this feel way too drawn out. I don’t want to write off Todd Phillips as a boring filmmaker, but twice now he’s managed to fail to find the interesting story to tell about a killer clown. The big ideas and breathless monologues are for naught if you can barely keep your eyes open when you aren’t rolling them.

Continue reading “Cinema Dispatch: Joker: Folie à Deux & Terrifier 3” →