Academy Award-nominated director Todd Phillips and his new sequel Joker: Folie à Deux Boldly ask the bold question: What if the most annoying guy you know had an equally annoying girlfriend? And what if they sang show tunes to each other? And what if you had to look?

The man in question is Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), the 2019 social outcast turned serial killer jokerwho is in prison awaiting trial after the events of the first film. The girlfriend is one Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga), a woman with both a master’s degree in psychiatry and an obsession with Fleck, who gets herself locked up to better stalk him. Harley Quinn and Joker’s toxic, codependent relationship has existed in the Batverse for decades, first appearing in Batman: The Animated Seriess in 1992 – and the former doctor and the one-time patient who drove her crazy have been explored in comics, movies and TV. In Phillips’ new film, however, their entanglement is rewritten to be even grimmer and, frankly, flatter (especially Quinn’s arc), but with a lot more singing.

Yes, although he doesn’t like to tell anyone, Phillips has also managed to make a movie musical about the Joker murder case. On paper, making a supervillain movie without burning down a city or threatening the world is about as subversive as a director can be. Possibly ignore the strict guidelines that come with franchise filmmaking and the demands of Warner Brothers and then throw in song and dance? There was potential for something truly subversive here.

But as Fleck reminds us, some people are not looking for change, but simple misery. For two hours and twenty minutes Joker: Folie à DeuxPhillips shows us how.

Following a trend of films such as Mean girls And Wonkathe marketing and creative team behind it Joker: Folie à Deux, aka Joker 2have neglected to clarify that the film is a musical (a choice for the upcoming film). Bad also seems to make). Part of that obfuscation may be a conscious effort not to alienate joker‘s original audience, but it may also be based on the idea that moviegoers don’t like musicals. Mean girls And Wonka didn’t sell themselves as musicals, and they were considered box office successes – meanwhile obvious musicals like the Westside story revival and In the Heights disappointed.

That said, and despite the reluctance, Joker 2 is really a movie musical – sometimes it tries to be very tense.

Phillips uses music as a very obvious, if not very sensitive, means of storytelling. Throughout the film, Fleck’s sanity is questioned. Everyone from judges to doctors talks about living in a “fantasy world.” Enter: the singing and dancing. From “Get Happy” to the Carpenters’ “Close to You,” the film’s songs act as a glimpse into Fleck’s desires, fears, and mental illness all rolled into one.

You can only get to know this man’s surreal inner life by peering into his delirious hallucinations, where we find a sparkling, blinding version of his trauma and mental illness.

These moments also allow Lady Gaga to take off her pop star mask and show us Stefani Germanotta, theater kid. She’s good, especially when Fleck imagines himself and Harley as some sort of chaotic Sonny and Cher duo. Gaga’s committed, crackling performance is proof that there’s room for a new Judy Garland biopic, as long as she can audition.

Phoenix, on the other hand, wags and screeches through his digits.

The result sounds like a large bird harassing another smaller bird. Phoenix’s vocal performance is deliberately bad, especially considering this guy won an Oscar for playing Johnny Cash Walk the line. Perhaps Phillips believes his audience wouldn’t be able to fully understand how disturbed Fleck is when he sounds smooth and delightful in his own fantasies, but Phoenix makes him sound deliberately dissonant. After about three songs, singing feels a bit like a little punishment. I guess that’s the point: being inside Joker’s head should be an unpleasant experience. I just wanted to be dissatisfied in a different way.

The most confusing element of Joker 2 isn’t that it’s a musical; it is that it is a courtroom proceeding. Although there is a rich cinematic history of clowns and their girlfriends in courtrooms, this is not a choice that makes for an exciting film.

At the heart of this two hour and twenty minute film is the question of whether Arthur Fleck, aka Joker, is insane and, by extension, whether the Joker is real. As a defense strategy, his lawyer (played by Catherine Keener) claims that although Fleck has killed five people, he has dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder. (The police don’t know that Fleck killed his own mother, which would bring the death count to six.) Joker is that other personality, and so Fleck can’t be held responsible. Prosecutor Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) – the man who will become the Batman villain known as Two-Face – claims that Fleck and Joker are one and the same: a violently depraved killer.

Watching Fleck in jail, awaiting trial, or at trial, waiting to go back to prison, just doesn’t make for exciting viewing. Dissociative identity disorder as a legal argument is somehow compelling, but less so when it becomes all that happens. (It’s also important to note that, despite some media portrayals, people with DID are not more violent than the general public.) Courtroom proceedings require some twist or build-up to enhance the drama. Starting with all the cards on the table – Arthur Fleck is guilty of Joker or not – just takes the atmosphere out of the genre.

Maybe that’s why it’s a musical?

An iconic character since the 1960s, the Joker was created to terrorize Gotham City. The Joker wasn’t made to sit in a prison cell and talk legal strategy with his lawyer. There’s a reason so many Batman comics and adaptations have a jailbreak scene. Batman’s villains are more interesting when they commit crimes!

Phillips seems to want to make a larger point about how the most terrifying part of the character is Joker’s influence on the citizens of Gotham. If Fleck can be Joker, what’s stopping everyone else in town from being Joker? If Fleck is declared legally insane, how can the laws in Gotham protect people? If no one can be held accountable for murder, it doesn’t matter how powerful Gotham’s police force is; it doesn’t even matter how powerful his heroes are. But other than the huge crowd outside the courtroom, some wearing Joker masks, Phillips doesn’t really show us what’s happening in Gotham. We don’t really understand what’s at stake in Joker’s judgment, even if it involves the destruction of a civilized society.

Worst of all, Phillips has intentionally or unintentionally created a bizarre, humorless version of it My cousin Vinny. In the 1992 classic, a clown and his Italian girlfriend are the only people standing in the way of a confused town convicting a few losers for murder. In Joker 2a clown and his Italian-esque girlfriend are the only people standing in the way of a confused town convicting a dweeb for murder. Now imagine if Marisa Tomei wasn’t charming, the clown wasn’t funny, and there were no twists, no turns, and no 1963 Pontiac Tempest with its independent rear suspension. Your Honor, that stern, miserable thing it is The Joker2.