"Joker: Folie à Deux" review — Musical sequel is an unmotivated slog
“Got a joke for us today?” The first film I ever seriously reviewed for this blog was Todd Phillips’ Joker just a little over five years ago. It’s not a review I’m particularly proud of — I have oft debated unpublishing the post — but I keep it available on this site as a testament to how much my voice has evolved since. Despite my pervasive distaste for the film, something that has not changed since I was eighteen, Joker holds a special place in my heart. It’s the film that began this five-years-and-counting compulsion to write about the films I see in the theatre as some way of processing my experiences. I can’t simply dismiss a film that began such an enduring hobby. Stepping back into the grime-coated streets of Phillips’ Gotham City felt familiar, bringing me back into my much younger self. But it was not a familiarity I enjoyed. The streets still reek of the pungent self-obsession that made the original such a chore. By only his second Joker outing, Phillips is already running
