I had rsvp’d to a Joker: Folie a Deux screening in Manhattan, but given the almost bizarrely negative reviews this far plus the fact that I can see it tomorrow evening locally via my AMC membership, it didn’t seem worth the train fare.
I am actually looking forward to liking this film, and that’s largely due to my understanding that it’s highly dismissive of typical D.C. fanboy expectations. This in itself turns me on.
Australian critic Peter Gray: “In the same way that it was quite the baffling result that 2019’s Joker ‘laughed’ its way to a billion dollar haul at the box office, Joker: Folie à Deux and all its ‘fuck you’ energy to WB fandom and mainstream appeal is a strikingly anti-audience effort that deserves praise for being so bold with its mentality, but not for its final result as a narrative we can invest in.
“Whether or not writer/director Todd Phillips has anything intentional to say or not with his off-putting psychological drama is best left to the audiences to decipher, but the fact that he’ll no doubt [attract] said audiences to theatres this weekend for a film that’s so aggressively subversive and oppositional to what the fans expect is the biggest laugh of all; and it’s the only one this taxing sequel is going to get.”
“Todd Phillips and Scott Silver deserve credit for going their own way with a canonical DC character. But it’s difficult to imagine hard-core Batman universe aficionados being thrilled by a movie that — OK, this is definitely a spoiler — would seem to wipe out an entire future for a key nemesis enshrined in comic-book mythology, rendering him a sad, broken man.”
