Movies

Peter Suderman | 10.4.2024 10:30 AM

Sometime over the past several years, a particular meme-like social media post format became popular: Someone would post someone saying something that was totally self-contradictory or self-undermining, something so patently crazy or ridiculous that no sane and reasonable person could possibly accept it.

Given the timing, this was probably at least partially the result of the 2019 movie Joker, an origin story in which Batman's archnemesis was portrayed as a dim, desperate, depressed loser who snaps in response to an uncaring, ugly world that seems formless and out of control.

Well, I'm here to tell you that I have seen the follow-up, Joker: Folie à Deux, and that it is such an inert, joyless, unpleasant slog, I struggle to conceive of how it got made or to plausibly imagine what any sane person could have been thinking during the development or production.

Joker: Folie à Deux is a two-hour-plus, event-free recapitulation of the events of the previous film. Nothing happens. The first Joker was ugly in spirit and had essentially one thematic note, but there was at least a steady progression toward a moment when the titular character would finally manifest in full. The sequel has no such........

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