Joker: Folie à Deux (2024) review

As a result of the carnage from the first Joker, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) is locked up in the Arkham State Hospital where the guards, including Jackie (Brendan Gleeson), routinely mistreat him and the other patients, but when Arthur attends a music class and meets Lee (Lady Gaga), who claims she also comes from an abusive background, he conjures up a magical dreamworld where they perform duets together.  Since the original movie was such a cultural and financial success, Phillips felt like he could do anything he wanted this time, by starting it off with a cartoon (in which the Joker "battles" with his Jungian shadow) and turning it into a musical, and the main idea here is that "perceived" love between two delusional individuals can have redemptive powers ... and yet there are entirely too many songs, it's too aggressively dour in tone and a good portion of it is an exhaustive courtroom trial.  It kind of wants to be this "psychological study" of a "schizophrenic," except its source is a comic book and not reality, although Phoenix (who deservedly won the Academy Award for the previous film) and Gaga do their best to flesh it out.  The ending is a dark treat for the patient viewer, though: there's an unexpected bombing, Lee bails on her man and Fleck is shanked by a "fan" and dies in a pool of his own blood.  That's all folks.