Movie Review: 'Folie à Deux' reckons with 'The Joker'

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Movie Review: 'Folie à Deux' reckons with 'The Joker'

2024-10-03 22:33 Last Updated At：22:40

Let's put on a happy face, at least to start, for “Joker: Folie à Deux.”

If there's one undeniably compelling thing about both Todd Phillips' divisive 2019 original and his new follow-up, it's that these movies are best when they dance. The first movie might have been a muddled attempt to retrofit a “Taxi Driver”-styled ‘70s realism into a Joker origin story, but, man, when Joaquin Phoenix is on his toes, it's hard to look away.

Just the image of a gaunt Phoenix decked out in the red suit, with his green-streaked hair slicked back, was enough to give “Joker” a kick. The role gave Phoenix, a full-bodied actor, a day-glo canvas on which to unleash torrents of movement, cycling between wounded restraint and flamboyant release, in a comic-book genre that usually leaves performers paralyzed by spandex.

He's nearly as captivating in “Joker: Folie à Deux," a musical that closely follows the events of the first film as an imprisoned Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) goes on trial for the murders that occurred at the culmination of "Joker.” Even the way Phoenix theatrically smokes as Arthur — which he does quite a lot in "Folie à Deux" — shows you how much he's luxuriating in the limber physicality of the character.

But any sense of forward momentum has gone out the window in “Joker: Folie à Deux,” which opens in theaters Thursday. Phillips has followed his very anti-hero take on the Joker with an a very anti-sequel. It combines prison drama, courthouse thriller and musical, and yet turns out remarkably inert given how combustible the original was. If ”Joker" — which some claimed sympathized the kind of lone gunmen that populate our real world — stirred debate, “Folie à Deux” is a self-conscious rejoinder to all that discussion, spending much of its time interrogating Arthur's actions from the last movie.

That makes it a theoretically interesting film but a curiously dull one, particularly given that it stars two such incredibly watchable performers in Phoenix and Lady Gaga, who plays a fellow inmate, Lee Quinzel, infatuated with the Joker. Phillips deserves credit for subverting expectations. Most directors would turn Arthur loose for a sequel chock-full of violence and mayhem, not Burt Bacharach song-and-dance sequences. But laudable as the intentions of “Folie à Deux” may be, it feels thoughtfully but tiresomely stuck in the past.

“You gotta joke for us today?” asks an Arkham State Hospital guard (Brendan Gleeson, back inside a jail post-"Paddington 2") as they pull Arthur from his cell. He is seemingly even thinner now, his shoulder blades sticking out. A wan look shows he's jokeless, too, having clearly reverted back to the depression that Arthur earlier stewed in.

That interaction, and others that follow, carries on some of the themes of “Joker,” which imagined Arthur and the mania that springs from him as the warped product of a cruel urban world and failed social safety net. Arthur is now heading for either the death penalty or life in prison, it's just a matter of whether his attorney (Catherine Keener) can convince a jury that he suffers from split personality syndrome.

We are again asked to consider and weigh how Arthur is treated by those around him, including the guards who at turns mock him, ask him for his autograph or show him a little compassion. Gotham City district attorney, Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey), believes he should die for killing five, including the late-night talk-show host Murray Franklin live on air. Does Arthur deserve our sympathy? “Folie à Deux” is a little like the “Seinfeld” finale: a moral, courtroom rehashing.

The throngs outside the courthouse clamor not for Arthur but the Joker, who they regard as an anarchist martyr. They crave entertainment, and Arthur, or the Joker, is tempted to give it to them. One psychology expert claims Arthur's mental illness is “just a show.” In many ways — including a mock Looney Tunes cartoon that opens the movie — “Folie à Deux” continues the first movie's interest in considering, and satirizing, what it is we crave in entertainment. Do we want the "real" story of Arthur or the fantasy of the Joker?

I'm not sure “Folie à Deux” always successfully pegs audience desire, though. What I most wanted in “Folie à Deux” was for it to stop playing with the concepts of its characters and instead let them breathe a little more on their own. It's not surprising that the movie works best when Arthur and Lee lock into one other. This is Arthur's first blush with the love he's lacked ("She gets me," he says), but their connection may also have more to do with fantasy. Their time together is actually somewhat limited but, in Arthur's imagination, their emotions soar in songs, mostly old standards ("Get Happy," “For Once in My Life,” “That's Life”), they sing tenderly to one another.

These musical interludes break free of an otherwise fairly bleak and belabored narrative, as a legal and penal system that doesn't know how to handle Arthur's pain — or that he's a reflection of their failure — help twist him back into the Joker. Once the Joker does fully emerge, Phoenix's Fleck is visibly aghast at what he's wrought.

All of this wrestling with “The Joker” makes “Folie à Deux” an impressively un-superhero-movie-like, and a deliberate denial of audience expectation. But it's also spinning its wheels. It's not surprising that “Folie à Deux” originated in concept as a stage show. It's stuck in place, with only Phoenix's dazzling contortions to marvel at.

“Joker: Folie à Deux," a Warner Bros. release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for some strong violence, language throughout, some sexuality, and brief full nudity. Running time: 139 minutes. Two stars out of four.

Biden signs bill that averts government shutdown and brings a close to days of Washington upheaval

2024-12-22 00:20 Last Updated At：00:30

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Saturday signed legislation that averts a government shutdown heading into Christmas, bringing a final close to days of upheaval in Washington after Congress passed a bipartisan budget plan just past the deadline and rejected Donald Trump's core demand in the negotiations.

The deal funds the government at current levels through March 14 and provides $100 billion in disaster aid and $10 billion in agricultural assistance to farmers.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had insisted lawmakers would “meet our obligations” and not allow federal operations to close. But the outcome at the end of a tumultuous week was uncertain after Trump had insisted the deal include an increase in the government's borrowing limit. If not, he had said, then let the closures “start now.”

Johnson's revised plan was approved 366-34, and it was passed by the Senate by a 85-11 vote after midnight. By then, the White House said it had ceased shutdown preparations.

“There will be no government shutdown,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Johnson, who had spoken to Trump after the House vote, said the compromise was "a good outcome for the country” and that the president-elect “was certainly happy about this outcome, as well.”

The final product was the third attempt from Johnson, the beleaguered speaker, to achieve one of the basic requirements of the federal government — keeping it open. The difficulties raised questions about whether Johnson will be able to keep his job, in the face of angry Republican colleagues, and work alongside Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk, who was calling the legislative plays from afar.

The House is scheduled to elect the next speaker on Jan. 3, 2025, when the new Congress convenes. Republicans will have an exceedingly narrow majority, 220-215, leaving Johnson little margin for error as he tries to win the speaker's gavel.

One House Republican, Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, criticized Republicans for the deficit spending in the bill and said he was now “undecided” about the GOP leadership. Others are signaling unhappiness with Johnson as well.

Yet Trump's last-minute debt limit demand was almost an impossible ask, and Johnson had almost no choice but to work around that pressure. The speaker knew there wouldn’t be enough support within the slim Republican majority alone to pass any funding package because many Republican deficit hawks prefer to cut the federal government and would not allow more debt.

Instead, the Republicans, who will have full control of the White House, House and Senate in the new year, with big plans for tax cuts and other priorities, are showing they must routinely rely on Democrats for the votes needed to keep up with the routine operations of governing.

The federal debt stands at roughly $36 trillion, and the spike in inflation after the coronavirus pandemic has pushed up the government’s borrowing costs such that debt service next year will exceed spending on national security. The last time lawmakers raised the debt limit was June 2023. Rather than raise the limit by a dollar amount, lawmakers suspended the debt limit through Jan. 1, 2025.

There is no need to raise that limit right now because the Treasury Department can begin using what it calls “extraordinary measures” to ensure that America does not default on its debts. Some estimate these accounting maneuvers could push the default deadline to the summer of 2025. But that’s what Trump wanted to avoid because an increase would be needed while he was president.

GOP leaders said the debt ceiling would be debated as part of tax and border packages in the new year. Republicans made a so-called handshake agreement to raise the debt limit at that time while also cutting $2.5 trillion in spending over 10 years.

It was essentially the same deal that flopped Thursday night — minus Trump’s debt demand. But it's far smaller than the original deal Johnson struck with Democratic and Republican leaders — a 1,500-page bill that Trump and Musk rejected, forcing him to start over. It was stuffed with a long list of other bills — including much-derided pay raises for lawmakers — but also other measures with broad bipartisan support that now have a tougher path to becoming law.

Trump, who has not yet been sworn into office, is showing the power but also the limits of his sway with Congress, as he intervenes and orchestrates affairs from Mar-a-Lago alongside Musk, who is heading up the new Department of Government Efficiency.

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Stephen Groves, Mary Clare Jalonick, Darlene Superville and Bill Barrow contributed to this report.