From Owen Gleiberman’s Variety review of Joker: Folie a Deux, which appeared just after 1 pm eastern today:

“I should mention that not enough happens in Folie a Deux. The movie is two hours and 18 minutes long, and here’s the entire plot:

“Arthur (Joaquin Phoenix) is wasting away in Arkham State Hospital. He meets Lee (Lady Gaga), who devotes herself to him. He goes on trial, and the is-he-a-dual-personality-or-just-a-criminal debate unfolds. A verdict is reached. A fateful bomb explodes. The end.

“As a critic, I’ve experienced my share of debates, but I have never understood the morally judgmental quality that hung over the criticisms of Joker. That the film invited us to have a deep identification with a twisted sociopath wasn’t, in my book, a weakness; it was a strength. The movie was, among other things, an allegory of the Trump era, but it’s almost as if the critics were saying, ‘We don’t like the movie because Arthur is a nasty incel who leads an uprising just like Trump!’

“To me, the criticisms of Joker were sort of comparable to a studio executive giving notes that basically said, ‘Raging Bull‘s Jake LaMotta isn’t likable enough.’

“Did the critics, with Joker, turn into cautious executive scolds? In my opinion, they did. But the upshot is that Todd Phillips, making what I think is a huge mistake, listened to them.

“Joker: Folie à Deux may be ambitious and superficially outrageous, but at heart it’s an overly cautious sequel. Phillips has made a movie in which Arthur really is just poor Arthur; he does nothing wrong and isn’t going to threaten anyone’s moral sensibilities. In fact, he actually blows the only good thing that ever happened to him — winning the love of Lee’s Harley Quinn — because he denies the Joker in himself. He’s now just a singing-and-dancing puppet clown living in his imagination.

“Is that entertainment? Audiences, I suspect, will still turn out in droves to see Folie à Deux. But when it comes to bold mainstream filmmaking, it’s the scolds who are having the last laugh.”