The most brutal and bizarre reviews of whatever Lady Gaga was doing in Joker: Folie à Deux

Joker: Folie à Deux has officially landed in cinemas, and nobody has recovered from how unbelievably weird it is. Why is this gory superhero thriller also a jukebox musical? Why did Lady Gaga agree to tap dance? Who on earth thought that this film was a good idea? The reviews are just as bewildering as Lady Gaga was in Joker: Folie à Deux.

Fyi, Joker was a film from 2019 in which Joaquin Phoenix tried to make the Batman villain all edgy and intellectual. The Joker cries at the TV and locks people in refrigerators for two hours, and the film somehow made a billion dollars and won two Oscars. In the long-awaited sequel, Lady Gaga does a, ahem, unique take on the Joker’s girlfriend Harley Quinn. Except without all the over the top outfits and sassiness and lesbian love stories and literally everything that usually makes the character fun.

Lady Gaga has taken her role in the film very, very seriously. She supposedly stayed in character as Harley Quinn for the whole time that Joker: Folie à Deux was being filmed, and during the press tour. Having seen some of the savage reviews, I’m not convinced that was a good use of her time.

So, here is a round-up of the must brutal and bizarre reviews of the very questionable new Lady Gaga film Joker: Folie à Deux.

‘A half-baked, halfhearted musical’

Yes, this gory psychological crime thriller based on comic books is also… a jukebox musical? If you’re confused, so were loads of critics.

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A lot of reviews questioned the director Todd Phillips’s logic of making a film that’s half gory thriller, and half American show tunes. There aren’t that many people in the middle section of the Venn diagram of musical theatre kids and horror nerds.

Manohla Dargis wrote in The New York Times, “The big non-news about “Folie à Deux” is that it’s a half-baked, halfhearted musical complete with one star who can sing, Lady Gaga as Lee Quinzel a.k.a. Harley Quinn, and another (Phoenix) who can’t or won’t.

“Joker: Folie à Deux is such a dour, unpleasant slog that it is hard to know why it was made or for whom.”

Yes, the Joker and Harley Quinn sing and dance. No, it’s not good.
(Image via Warner Bros. Pictures)

Several reviews were unimpressed with the choice of songs which Lady Gaga performed in Joker: Folie à Deux. Most of the songs are all-American golden oldies that anybody under the age of 70 would skip if they came up on shuffle. Where’s some Chappell Roan when you need her?

David Ehrlich slated the song choices in his review for IndieWire. “It’s interesting to note that Arthur prefers to sing romantic ballads while Lee tends to lead with songs about strength and power, but it certainly isn’t interesting to watch, as most of the tunes are pared down into dull cabaret arrangements and shot against the black void of the characters’ shared imagination. For two supposedly unhinged psychopaths who are meant to be enabling each other’s madness, Arthur and Lee don’t have a scintilla of creativity between them.

“Folie à Deux simply tap dances in place for the majority of its listless runtime, stringing together a series of underwhelming musical numbers that are either too on the nose to communicate anything that Arthur couldn’t express without them — Shirley Bassey’s “The Joker” is a major “are we really doing this?” moment — or too vaguely related to its characters to express anything at all.”

Lady Gaga is ‘drastically underused’ and barely in it

Surely the biggest crime in this crime thriller is that the director didn’t give Lady Gaga enough to do.

Owen Gleiberman from Variety complained, “Gaga, who has a lovely unforced presence in Folie à Deux, is drastically underused. Her Lee never quite takes wing. Gaga has a nice quiet moment singing (They Long to Be) Close to You, but the number doesn’t build. Gaga never gets a chance to do what she did in A Star Is Born: seize the audience with her rapture.”

Harley Quinn doesn’t call the Joker ‘puddin’ and that’s just a crime against the lore
(Image via Warner Bros. Pictures)

Peter Bradshaw was similarly unimpressed with Lady Gaga’s screen time in The Guardian. He wrote, “Lady Gaga brings a sly and manipulative malice to her role: Harley is secretive, smart and genuinely disturbed in a way that Arthur/Joker perhaps isn’t. Is she to be the Lady Macbeth of DC supervillainy? Sort of. The story as constructed doesn’t give her character much of a chance at development – in that direction or any other.

“The whole movie finally turns out to be oppressively, claustrophobically and repetitively becalmed in that oddly unreal Gotham-universe jail with Phoenix and Gaga kept apart for long periods.”

The plot is ‘overlong and empty’

I’ve seen some overly sincere TikTokers explain that actually the point of the film is that it’s disappointing because you’re not supposed to idealise the Joker in the way that some very strange people did after the first film. That’s definitely an original excuse for making a bad film.

Several critics felt there wasn’t enough plot to fill the runtime of two hours and eighteen minutes.

Harley Quinn spends most of the film sitting silently in ordinary clothes at the back of courtrooms, and that’s just tragic
(Image via Warner Bros. Pictures)

Spencer Kornhaber wrote in The Atlantic, “Folie à Deux is both overlong and empty, padded out with copious shots of characters walking down hallways or staring out of car windows. The romantic storyline develops too quickly, mostly off-screen, and then just stagnates.

“Audience members may walk out feeling punished for the crime of wanting to be entertained by a comic-book-inspired movie-musical starring some of the most successful performers on Earth.”

The Hollywood Reporter‘s review by David Rooney says, “For a movie running two-and-a-quarter hours, Folie à Deux feels narratively a little thin and at times dull.”

I would still watch it again.

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Feature image via Warner Bros. Pictures