‘Underwhelming’ Joker: Folie à Deux accused of ‘criminally wasting’ Lady Gaga in poor reviews

Joker: Folie à Deux has had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and critics – as aggregated by movie review site Metacritic – are panning Joker 2 for one specific reason: the “criminal” under-use of Lady Gaga.

Despite winning a fairly impressive 11-minute standing ovation at the festival on Wednesday (4 September), the reviews are far from glowing for Todd Phillips’ new offering. It’s currently garnered a 54 per cent approval rating on Metacritic and fares slightly better on Rotten Tomatoes with a 60 per cent score.

But that’s still a rather underwhelming Metacritic rating for one of the most anticipated releases of the year.

The Warner Bros/DC sequel follows Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck two years on from the events of 2019’s Oscar-winning Joker.

The aspiring stand-up comic and mentally unwell villain, aka The Joker, is locked up at Gotham’s Arkham asylum, where he clasps eyes on the institution’s music therapist, fellow patient and fan: Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, played by Gaga. 

To most DC fans, she’s better-known as bisexual villainess Harley Quinn. And so, one of the superhero universe’s most famed relationships begins.

The new film is a musical, despite its cast’s denials, with Gaga having recorded some 20 songs for the soundtrack. Although it seems that Harley Quinn forms a major part of the plot, the first reviews suggest that Gaga is actually massively underused.

In a scathing “C-minus” write-up for IndieWire, David Ehrlich dubbed the film “an excruciatingly, perhaps even deliberately, boring sequel that does everything in its power not to amuse you”.

Ehrlich described the “Rain on Me” singer as being “side-lined” for much of the “boring, flat” story, which is “such a criminal waste of Lady Gaga that we should demand a public hearing”. Oh, and the musical numbers don’t save it either – they are, apparently, “largely forgettable”.

IGN critic Siddhant Adlakha agreed, saying the film was dragged down by its “unfulfilled potential”. Although it begins as a “novel approach” to the famed Joker and Harley Quinn romance, it is “bogged down by a lengthy courtroom saga, which not only keeps the dazzling Lady Gaga away from the spotlight, but centres the movie entirely around its own predecessor”.

There’s similar criticism in Vulture, where Alison Willmore describes a “punishing sequel” that is “a waste” of Gaga’s talents. “It is perversely dedicated to eliminating as much pleasure as possible from its song and dance numbers,” she added.

Writing for the BBC, Nicholas Barber condemned the film as a “dreary, underwhelming, unnecessary slog” which leaves the feeling of there not being enough plot to fill the run time.

There are some reviews – few and far between, admittedly – that have at least a couple of positive things to say. While Jo-Ann Titmarsh in the Evening Standard ultimately gave it just two stars, she praised Phoenix’s “beautifully accomplished [and] “magnetic” performance that “raises the film to another level”.

In his three-star review, The Guardian’s veteran film critic Peter Bradshaw praised Gaga’s “diva charge” and the “sensational” opening, but ultimately felt Joker 2 ends up “as strident, laborious and often flat-out tedious as the first film”.

The best of the lot is the four stars awarded Metro, with Tori Brazier praising the film for being significantly better than the first.

“In terms of scope, imagination and approach, Folie à Deux achieves two remarkable things,” she wrote. “It updates the movie musical, using the genre in an inspired way that shouldn’t frighten fans who think they don’t like them. It’s also that rare sequel that meets, if not surpasses, the quality of its predecessor.”

Joker: Folie à Deux is due in UK cinemas on 2 October and in the US two days later.

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