Joker: Folie à Deux

Directed by Todd Phillips, Joker: Folie à Deux follows Joaquin Phoenix’s title character as he falls for a quirky mental patient (Lady Gaga’s Lee Quinzel) while standing trial for murder. Filmmaker Phillips, armed with his and Scott Silver’s screenplay, delivers a perpetually subdued endeavor that falls right in line with its equally low-key predecessor, and it’s clear, certainly, that the picture, for the most part, comes off as a gritty drama revolving around a seriously unhinged central character – with the gimmick this time around an ongoing emphasis on hit-and-miss musical numbers. (The first such sequence, wherein Joker serenades fellow patients with a performance of “For Once in My Life,” is nothing short of mesmerizing, though the remainder are generally perfunctory and kind of forgettable.) And while Phoenix’s gritty work remains a continuing highlight within the proceedings, Joker: Folie à Deux, saddled with a palpably, unreasonably overlong running time (138 minutes!), progresses into a sluggish second half that’s rarely as engrossing as Phillips has undoubtedly intended – which is a shame, ultimately, given that the picture does, at the outset, stand as a refreshing change from the usual CGI-heavy, infuriatingly frenetic comic-book fare dominating mutiplexes.

**1/2 out of ****