"Joker: Folie`a Deux...That's Entertainment?

Okay, we all know this is where the slagging is meant to come in. Where the writer cites the grand success of the first "Joker" movie and proceeds to indict director Todd Phillips for catastrophically and self-indulgently, in league with his cast, screwing up the sequel.  

So is "Joker: Folie 'a Deux" actually entertaining? I'm going to say, "Well…kinda."

 The least, and maybe the most, you can say is that Phillips kept the tension steadily ratcheted up. Per England’s Telegram: “It can’t quite match its predecessor for dizzying impact. But it matches it for horrible tinderbox tension: it’s a film you feel might burst into flames at any given moment.”

I can’t defend the spiraling grimness, whatever it's supposed to say about our violent world, and possibly some of you just took your virtual shoes off and virtually threw them at me. I'm not aiming to critique the critiques. But it should be confessed that I'm something of a Todd Phillips fanboy, though perhaps not at the level of Francis Ford Coppola, who defended Phillip's oeuvre even as Coppola's "Megalopolis" was getting a similar hiding from critics and the public.  I may even have been that guy at the raging kegger who thinks "Hangover 2" is perfectly serviceable.  Yes, especially Stu's song, as performed by Ed Helms in a variation on Billy Joel's "Allentown":

When we woke up, we were wasted and drunk

Phil got shot—we got beaten by monks…

 There's another verse, a get-the-kids-out-of-the-room tidbit. When Zach Galifianakis gives a snorting laugh, adding, "I remember that," the glance Helms gives him is a model of restraint.

Brilliant acting!

Of course, it's a long reach from the desperate goofballs of the "Hangover" trilogy to the desperate goofball that is Arthur Fleck as he shape-shifts in and out of the Joker persona. 

The state of play at this writing, as the new film sinks on Metacritic and at the box office, is not likely to yield anything but more disrespect for Phillips.  Phoenix and Gaga are getting thrown considerable shade themselves--and brushing it off. 

 The history unboxes quickly. In January 1993, Warner Brothers, under their DC Comics imprimatur, rang a change on the Batman universe and picked up on a villain who appeared in the inaugural Batman #1 in…1940. (The original comic books artists squabbled for decades over who invented the character—but of course, the root inspiration can be found on any deck of playing cards.)

The unfailingly offbeat character jumped into a 1966 TV show that was soon followed by a movie, both starring sometime heartthrob Cesar Romero. The white greasepaint and blood-red clown mouth would persist even as time and creativity pushed the character's slide towards evil. It's hard to see the old stills of Adam West as Batman and Julie Newmar as Catwoman and not miss such foundational, ongoing figures as played by various actors, and not miss them in the two Joker-centric films. 

Just to peek through the curtain at the franchise's past glories, you need only watch the great fundraiser party scene in summer of 2008's "The Dark Knight" to contrast it with the  first "Joker’s” joylessness (say, watching Arthur give mom a bath).  Is it unfair to miss the vibrancy of Christopher Nolan's filmic dance with Heath Ledger's landmark Joker and his adversary the Dark Knight (in a witty performance by Christian Bale). As Maggie Gyllenhaal interrupts the dire threats of the knife-brandishing mad clown at the gala, Ledger turns in what I think is his epic turn's best moment: "Well,  hel-lo,beautiful…"

 Of course he's got a knife to her throat moments later, but when Joker admires her will to fight, it's Bale who advises, "Then you're gonna love me," and knocks him sideways. Phoenix's performance in the first Joker was such a thunderclap of (Oscar-earning) talent and surprise that he carried that movie quite readily; it's in the new iteration we most miss the ensemble. We miss The Batman who shares some of Joker's grimmer attributes--to his palpable sorrow--and Aaron Eckhart's quicksilver Harvey Dent character who brings his own set of neuroses and torment. 

 Perhaps the media would not be putting the boot in so relentlessly had the key players kept it zipped and let the film tell its own tale. As Phillips told Variety's Brent Lang in an insightful cover story, "The question became, 'how can we top ourselves?' and you can only do that if you do something dangerous. But there were days on set where you'd look around and think, 'Holy fucking shit! What did we do?'"

He also confides that, "The goal of this movie is to make it feel like it was made by crazy people. The inmates are running the asylum."

 Phillips has had meticulous back-up from Gaga in echoing his sentiments, as he floats rationales:  "Most of the music in the movie is really just dialogue… just Arthur not having the words to say what he wants to say, so he sings them instead."  

Phoenix has defended the lead duo's live-on-camera warbling as purposely authentic, but rather aggravatingly adds, "I encouraged [Gaga] to sing poorly." (It's lines like that that made The Washington Post say while reviewing her spiffier new album derived from the film's song choices, "the world is ready for her to wipe off the greasepaint, put on a meat dress and be a pop star again."

 It can only be tedious to catalogue the many carps and sheer dismissals of "Joker 2," as some call it, and to enumerate the theories as to why Warner Brothers gave Phillips free rein. (Duh—a billion dollars buys you lots of auteurist, er, capital.)

 Richard Rushfield of The Ankler podcast and site has his usual astute take on what has been called "the flop era." He points out the film employed an army of workers in a bedraggled Hollywood production tempo, especially thanks to shooting in L.A.: "We were pushing, six months ago, everyone to take chances and to do things different. So, this attitude of beating up on the company for doing that, I don't quite understand the logic there. They were making a sequel to Warner Brothers' highest grossing film of 2019. It was the highest grossing R-rated movie in history when it came out. So, it wasn't exactly taking a wild swing to say, `Let's have Todd Phillips do another one of those.'"

I'm not here to scotch the idea of seeing the result, say—tonight. I went as part of a group of six to a half-full theater on the second night of its run, and we were okay later after just two brimming house margaritas.

 But permit me this carp. If you have Lady Gaga on board, and you have the Bee Gees classic "To Love Somebody" cleared, let the lady sing out. Oh, what she might have done with Bee Gee brother Robin Gibb's anguished, melismatic wail of repeated nah-nah's deep in that song. To borrow a query from the Los Angeles Times's Glen Whipp: "A musical co-starring Lady Gaga. How could you not be a little "Haaaaaa-ahhhh-ahhh-ohhhh-ahhaaaaaa-ahhhh-ahhh-ohhhh-ah" about the prospect of that?"

My point here is yes, curb those expectations. But in due course it will be time to let Phillips escape from the ranch to which gossipy reports said he'd retreated during opening weekend. I'm not asking for "Hangover 4."  And certainly not "Joker: Menage A Trois." (Well maybe—can you work Ana De Armas into that?) 

May Phillips find his groove again, and follow the formula he posited to Variety: "Why do something if it doesn't scare the shit out of you? I'm addicted to risk. I mean, it keeps you up at night. It makes your hair fall out. But it's the sweat that keeps you going."