Joker: Folie à Deux simply made its premiere on the Venice Movie Competition — to lower than enthusiastic evaluations.
The primary Joker, directed by Todd Phillips and starring Joaquin Phoenix as the long-lasting DC villain, additionally premiered at Venice, the place it was obtained very positively by critics and received the competition’s high prize, the Golden Lion. Whereas subsequent evaluations elsewhere had been a bit extra blended, the movie went on to turn into one of many highest-grossing R-rated movies in historical past, and an Oscar winner.
We’ll see what occurs when Folie à Deux premieres in theaters subsequent month, however the early phrase out of Venice this time is extraordinarily blended, and in some circumstances, downright damaging. Even some critics who beloved the primary Joker had harsh phrases for the sequel. The Hollywood Reporter’s David Rooney, for instance, known as the unique Joker “arguably the perfect Batman-adjacent film since The Darkish Knight.” Of Folie à Deux, he stated it “feels narratively slightly skinny and at occasions uninteresting.”
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READ MORE: Joaquin Phoenix Wished to Do a Joker Broadway Present
Equally, Display screen’s Tim Grierson tweeted that he nonetheless thinks “the unique Joker is terrific. And let the report present I believe Joker: Folie à Deux is most decidedly not.”
There have been some optimistic evaluations; Deadline’s Pete Hammond stated it’s a musical not like the rest he’d seen. Right here’s a sampling of the Joker 2 evaluations thus far, the great on the unhealthy.
Pete Hammond, Deadline:
With music, dance, comedy, darkness, animation, drama, violence and extra, it is a musical — if it even is a musical — like no different.
Geoffrey Macnab, The Impartial:
Simply as bleak and daring as the unique.
William Bibbiani, TheWrap:
It’s a tragic, pensive, and impressively odd movement image that makes use of the theatricality of film musicals to undermine its hero’s ambitions as a substitute of elevating them.
Owen Gleiberman, Selection:
The idea is audacious however the execution much less so.
Tim Grierson, Display screen Every day:
Girl Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix fail to spark in Todd Phillips’ musical sequel.
Siddhant Adlakha, IGN:
Too usually insists on returning to acquainted territory (and every now and then, acquainted footage) as a substitute of blazing a brand new path.
Alison Willmore, Vulture:
Commits the mortal sin of losing Girl Gaga.
David Ehrlich, Indiewire:
Todd Phillips’ musical sequel feels prefer it’s unhealthy on goal.
David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter:
Much more than its predecessor, the sequel reduces the archvillain to a hollowed-out product of childhood trauma and psychological sickness.
Jordan Farley, GamesRadar:
A daring departure from its lauded/loathed predecessor, but it surely’s additionally a far much less efficient automobile for its tragi-comic topic and lead actor.
Joker: Folie à Deux is scheduled to open in theaters on October 4.
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