Joker: Folie à Deux
First screened and reviewed in November 2024
Director: Adam Elliot. Voice Cast: Sarah Snook, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jacki Weaver, Dominique Pinon, Eric Bana, Magda Szubanski, Tony Armstrong, Nick Cave, Luke Elliot. Screenplay: Adam Elliot. In Brief:
Virtues of image, sound, and general rule-breaking steadily overwhelmed by stillborn and pointless conception.
VOR:③
Granting credit where I can, because little about this feels risk-averse. I wish these dares opened doors. An experiment that feels like a cul-de-sac.
Lights more money on fire than Heath Ledger did in The Dark Knight, just to watch it burn ...and to listen to it sing?
I like how Lawrence Sher photographed it. I appreciate the lead actors' commitment, even if they don't (and maybe can't) rise to the level of "giving good performances." At some level, I appreciate the determination to make something so defiantly strange and alienating, in slithery protest of what everyone wants it to be.
But also, why make a movie that nobody but nobody wants? The script, the courtroom narrative, and the overall conception are just unsurvivable liabilities, and Phillips's weaknesses as a director show more here than they did in Joker: Folie à Scorsese. But during development he also broke up with Bradley Cooper (professionally), so I can understand him being adrift. Anyway, just read Tim Brayton. Grade:C–
