Joker: Folie a Deux stars Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix appeared on Good Morning Britain. (ITV)
Joker: Folie à Deux is dropping, both in cinemas and on Rotten Tomatoes, and it seems that even leading Lady Gaga isn’t obsessed with the final edit.
The follow-up to Joaquin Phoenix’s 11-time Oscar-nominated 2019 film Joker, Joker: Folie à Deux sees “Rain On Me” superstar Lady Gaga join the cast as Harleen Quinzel (aka, Harley Quinn).
She’s a fellow Arkham Asylum resident alongside Phoenix’s Joker, who is awaiting trial for his crimes committed at the end of the first film, and the pair end up embroiled in a very bad romance indeed after their eyes meet during a music therapy session.
Despite anticipation for the film building over the past few years – with one pivotal scene in which Lady Gaga kisses a female heckler on the steps to the courthouse causing particular gay panic – it’s been a fairly tepid response from critics so far.
Now that the film is out in the world, the audience reviews are pouring in too, and it’s not looking good.
On Metacritic, the film is currently marked as 4.7 out of ten based on user reviews and 49 out of 100 based on critic reviews, while it’s so far garnered just a 39 per cent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Some critics are asking director Todd Phillips “Why So Serious?” as they believe he is “convinced that these Joker movies need to say something important about the state of the world”, while one new, scathing review in The i Paper describes the film – which is a musical – as “staggeringly stupid”. The review slaps the film with a one-star score.
“What makes Joker 2 so bad is that it refuses to commit to ANYTHING. There’s no theme at all, the court scenes are boring and the shock value ending is worse than I expected,” reads one audience review, as another declared: “There should never have been a sequel”.
Some fans are criticising the fact that the Philips and his team left some of the most anticipated moments on the cutting room floor – including that sapphic kiss scene.
Though several of the recent reviews praise Lady Gaga as a “star” in the film, it appears that both she and Joaquin Phoenix aren’t too impressed with the final edit.
During an interview with TV presenter Richard Arnold on Good Morning Britain earlier this week, Gaga and Phoenix were pressed on whether the final edit of the film was “everything they expected”.
Instead of instantly showering it with praise, the pair awkwardly turned to each other with a knowing smile and began to laugh.
“Not even they like the final edit, I’m crying,” wrote one social media user in response to the clip.
“The silence is pretty damning for the director and the editing crew,” quipped a second.
Despite their initial pause, Phoenix went on to insinuate that they are happy, to a degree, with how the film turned out.
“Oh God, it’s so hard to talk about… I feel like we achieved what we set out to do,” he said.
Thankfully, a faux pax with a glass of water – Phoenix thought Gaga was handing him a drink, when she was just getting one for herself – stopped them from having to go into the question further.
Joker: Folie à Deux is out in cinemas now.
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