Movie Monday: Joker Folie A Deux isn’t the Worst Movie of All Time… but it’s probably in the Top 5

Alright, I love joker. I love musicals. I love Lady Gaga a lot. I love Harley Quinn… and I love animated opening segments. I also love bad movies… but this was a movie where they really had an opportunity to make an amazing movie… and they made a courtroom drama with some music.

So the movie starts out with an animated opening segment… and while the animation is great- it just kind of isn’t the best animated segment. Harley Quinn isn’t even in it… it’s well animated but it just kind of hits you over the head with the message that Arthur Fleck has Dissassosiative Identity Disorder.

So I was trying to think of movies to compare this too because I’ve seen some bad movies and this is worse than a lot of them. I’d say it’s worse than Madame Webb, Morbius, Argylle, Cats, it’s probably on par with Welcome to Marwen… but I think there were more enjoyable parts to this movie than that one… and I’d say Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is the one movie I think may be worse than this.

I had heard Harley Quin in this movie was different than the Harley Quinn in most movies… she really wasn’t. They did kind of change the dynamic to have it be Harley that was manipulating Joker instead of Joker manipulating her… which I think was interesting. I thought maybe she was a jazz singer and that she was just as crazy as joker… but no. She’s just some rich kid with a masters degree and that wants to bang The Joker. The only interesting thing they did with her character was reverse the roles to have her manipulate joker. Other than that they really underused her and it was insane.

Joker also doesn’t kill anyone in this movie… so that is less exciting than the first movie when you kind of wondered who he was going to kill and what he was going to do. Plus the fact that they made this a musical… they really could have built up the horror and suspense that way… but more so than the movie being a musical… it’s a courtroom drama and a really boring one at first.

The best part of the movie was Leigh Gill playing Gary Puddles. You might remember him from the first movie- he is a fellow clown that works with Arthur and he witnesses Arthur kill Randall- and he spares Gary’s life… but Gary is really traumatized by this as we see in the movie. He is disappointed because all the other men Gary worked with made fun of him because he’s a little person- but Arthur was always nice to him… he gives a fantastic performance.

I kind of liked the movie was when it first became a musical and it was like “ohhh this is kind of going somewhere” but then it becomes a courtroom drama… and it’s like… why would they do that??? They could have had a movie with Joker and Harley escaping Arkham Asylum and going crazy together… but no. It was just the trial of Joker… and he just kind of goes crazy.

The thing I don’t really like about Arthur Fleck joker in general is that he wasn’t going after people to prove something or for any kind of message… he’s just a man with a low IQ and a gun… and people idolize him… the way people idolize a lot of mediocre men… but I digress. Like Arthur is just kind of full of himself and… idk. I’m not sure I like that concept. The first movie showed it from Arthur’s perspective more which was cool because we couldn’t tell what was real and what was fake.

I saw at least 5 people leave this movie- I heard a bunch of people snoring in the audience… the manager was out after the movie saying “ohhh I see a bunch of gloomy faces… did you guys just come out of Joker?” And then he asked someone “worst movie ever?” And the guy said “ohhh it was so bad!” And like… shoutout to my AMC theater- they’ve got a really good crew!

I probably have more I can say about this movie… but it’s been a few days since I started writing this and it was really hard because… this was a bad movie. I’ll talk about it later if I can think of anything to mention.

Bye!

-Shannon