BEFORE: Here we go, another Oscar-eligible film tonight, though I'm getting the feeling that this one just doesn't have the same Oscar buzz that "Joker" did, which was what, four years ago? Man, a lot can change in four years, one film gets an Oscar and a lot of praise and then the sequel gets NO buzz and people are left kind of scratching their heads over the decision to make a super-villain story as a jukebox musical. Such decisions are way above my pay grade, all I can do is watch the movies and then write down my thoughts. I'm still coming in hopeful, but the odds are not good here.
Steve Coogan carries over again from "The Lost King". This one was in theatrical release last October, and I had already done a Joaquin Phoenix thing a few months previously - "Napoleon", "C'Mon C'Mon" and "Beau Is Afraid". So that explains why I didn't go to the movie theater to see this, I just couldn't link to it at the time, I figured (rightly so) that it would be on cable within a few months. Worth the wait? Let's find out...
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Joker" (Movie #3,421)
THE PLOT: Struggling with his dual identity, failed comedian Arthur Fleck meets the love of his life, Harley Quinn, while incarcerated at Arkham State Hospital.
AFTER: Yeah, I can kind of see why the people who liked the first Todd Philips "Joker" movie don't really dig this one. Where's the action, where's the Joker being JOKER and killing people? He killed six people in the first film, and ZERO in the second? He sings a lot, sure, but that's not what we came here for. I expected, at the very least, for him to gas everyone in the courtroom during his trial, because that's exactly what an insane Clown Prince of Crime would do, and I'm left very very disappointed. He fell in love, great. He tried to make some sense of his life and seek some form of forgiveness, well whoop-de-freaking-doo, but again, not why I tuned in.
I'm also very confused about WHICH Joker this is supposed to be, like in the first film we saw Bruce Wayne as a young boy - not Arthur Fleck's half-brother, as suspected, but still, he's alive and his parents were alive and he wasn't on the road to being Batman yet. OK, so that places this Joker a couple decades in the past, is he going to STAY Joker, is he going to inspire the NEXT Joker, is he going to be the next Joker's father, uncle, second cousin once removed, what is the freakin' deal here? The movie defiantly doesn't even get around to ASKING these questions, let alone come close to answering them. So yeah, more disappointment there.
Same question for Harley Quinn, annoying referred to as "Lee" here, and again, it's some kind of proto- or pre-Batman version of the character. To be honest, we're not even sure what corner of the DC multiverse this takes place in, is it the SAME universe as "Justice League" or is this a pre-cursor to the Robert Pattinson "The Batman"-verse, or does this exist in its own little universe by itself? Again, we don't know, it's all very unclear and what is reality, anyway? Once you introduce the multiverse there's the small possibility that this takes place in a pocket reality created when The Flash went time-traveling, and then negated out of existence just as easily once he set things straight. The whole show "Gotham" is now pretty much retconned out of existence, and they're just about to scrap the whole DC Movie Universe and start it over again, so bad news if you liked the "Shazam!" movies or Justice League, because half the cast got cancelled or replaced and probably won't carry over to the NEW DCU, which I think starts when the new "Superman" movie comes out. Well, it does explain why Batman looks like Michael Keaton in some movies and like Ben Affleck in others - I'm used to it, I'm a comic book fan and I've seen at least four DC Universes come and go in my time, I started reading "Batman" and "Superman" right after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and I've learned to not get too attached.
Most people don't even seem to care, I guess they're just casual fans with short attention spans, and that's why I maintain they didn't need to depict three different Spider-Man-verses in the Sony films, because really, who gives a crap? We just want to see a good story with a lot of action, nasty villains and some cool web-slinging, and we'll work out the continuity later, or not at all.
This is my way of justifying "Joker: Folie à Deux", they could have gone anywhere with it, but no, they chose to kind of just go nowhere with it. Cardinal rule #1, at the very least, please be interesting, and this just isn't interesting at all. Trial scenes are BORING, the latest proof of that was "Anatomy of a Fall" which spent WAY too much time in the courtroom, and worse, it was a French courtroom with nine judges and seventeen lawyers and they all had something to say. Which is great if you want to watch a movie that will help you fall asleep. But hey, we've got Harvey Dent here working for the prosecution, so that's something. Finally, a character we recognize as a future Bat-villain, and a hint of where the story's going to go. Gee, you don't suppose he'll be in an accident in this movie that will damage half of his face, do you? I'm surprised there wasn't someone here accusing him of being a two-faced attorney.
But the rest of this is really junk - Joker's not in prison, but also frequently gets treated at the Arkham Hospital, and the movie has to bend itself over backwards here to get him into a music therapy class, where he can fall in love and also learn to express himself through song. This also explains the apparent NITPICK POINT that men and women are not supposed to be held in the same prison, but you know, "Despicable Me 4" made this exact same mistake in its ending, and nobody really cared about that, either. It's fine. I'm the only one complaining, but nobody listens to me, do they? So it's kind of set in both a prison AND a hospital, which is a bit confusing, to say the least. Would a man accused of killing 6 people be left alone and unsupervised in a somewhat-public place like a hospital? Probably not. So it's still a NP, just a different kind.
I can't really fault the song selections, except that format-wise it's kind of everything I hated about "Moulin Rouge" without anything that I liked about "Joker". And it kind of drives my point, if someone in a Joker movie is singing, "Come on, Get happy, get ready for the judgement day" they really should be killing the person they're singing to at that moment. Am I right? I do kind of like the mix of fantasy and reality, like seeing Joker and Harley acting like Sonny & Cher hosting a variety TV show, that is unusual and out there, I'll give you that. But they really missed an opportunity to have Lady Gaga sing her famous song "Poker Face" but retitled as "Joker Face". I can't be the first person to have thought of that.
I'm just going to move on, because even the current DC comic book continuity has acknowledged the fact that there could be multiple Jokers, there was even a miniseries called "Batman: Three Jokers" where Batman & Robin finally noticed that Joker often looks different during their encounters (because he's drawn by different artists, duh) and after some investigating, they determine that over time, they'd encountered at least three different men in the Joker make-up and acting psychotically. Now if you ask me, this kind of takes some of the strength away from the character, however it does explain why they keep putting him in jail or Arkham Asylum and a few comic book issues later, he's back committing crimes, or rather another guy who looks almost exactly like him is. Whatever, man, I mean, you run your comic book company the way you want, whatever sells more comic books is fine, but it's also a cheap move to cover up the fact that multiple artists and writers work on these stories, and they DON'T talk to each other, and editors are doing very little to maintain continuity and consistency across the DC line.
Well, for the linking, I kind of painted myself into a corner here, but it's not really my fault. Wikipedia told me that there was archive footage of Robert De Niro in this film, as deceased talk-show host Murray Franklin. It makes sense, Joker is on trial for his murder, so you would naturally think that in the courtroom, they MIGHT show footage of Joker appearing on his show, on that fateful night. Umm, it didn't happen - perhaps everyone is SO familiar with that infamous footage that there was no need to show it again, and doing so might prejudice the jury. Nope, still doesn't make sense. But we're not really here tonight for legal procedures, such is the nature of this jukebox musical. I was planning to follow this with "Killers of the Flower Moon", and now I can't. Oh, you'd better believe I went back and LOOKED for De Niro footage, there was just a still photo of him during the opening animation and another one on a book cover - guys, I need more than that. (I do, don't I?)
Luckily I can drop a film and still get back to the rest of the chain, it's just going to take me an extra step... I promised I wouldn't overload my January this year, but that's exactly what I need to do to get myself out of this jam. I'm going to try to watch an extra film over the coming weekend and then I think I'll be back on track, for sure I can still get to "Civil War" and proceed with the rest of the plan, and then still be where I need to be on February 1. It's not a problem, just, you know, a little heads-up would have been nice, and getting Wikipedia and IMDB on the same page would also have helped me out. Honestly, it's a bit of a relief, because I don't have AppleTV so I'd have to watch "Killers of the Flower Moon" on that pirate site, and it's 3 1/2 hours long - if I watch it on that pirate site and the connection's not good, it will just keep re-buffering every minute or so, and then the whole process will take like forever.
Also starring Joaquin Phoenix (last seen in "C'mon C'mon"), Lady Gaga (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Brendan Gleeson (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Catherine Keener (last seen in "Begin Again"), Zazie Beetz (last seen in "Bullet Train"), Harry Lawtey (last seen in "The Pale Blue Eye"), Leigh Gill (last seen in "Joker"), Ken Leung (last seen in "The Family Man"), Jacob Lofland (last seen in "Free State of Jones"), Bill Smitrovich (last seen in "The November Man"), Sharon Washington (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Alfred Rubin Thompson (last seen in "Hemingway & Gellhorn"), Connor Storrie, Gregg Daniel (last seen in "Clockwatchers"), Mac Brandt (last seen in "To Leslie"), George Carroll (last seen in "Central Intelligence"), John Lacy (last seen in "Just Mercy"), Tim Dillon, June Carryl (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Don McManus (last seen in "Senior Moment"), G.L. McQueary, Angela D. Watson, Murphy Guyer (last seen in "Wonderstruck"), Carson Higgins (last seen in "Babylon"), Gattlin Griffith (last seen in "Labor Day"), Hudson Oz, Stephen Stanton, Martin Kildare (last seen in "Palm Springs"),
with archive footage of Frances Conroy (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), Fred Astaire (last seen in "Sid & Judy"), Jack Buchanan (last seen in "The Band Wagon"), Nanette Fabray (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Oscar Levant (last seen in "The Barkleys of Broadway").
RATING: 4 out of 10 pieces of burning sheet music
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