I went into Joker: Folie à Deux with such an open mind, ladies and gentlemen. After all, while I didn’t particularly like Joker, I found it to be pretty effective at what it set out to do. The film was doing something I didn’t care for, but it was achieving its goals. The musical element here, the trailers, it all pointed to doing something bold and different, which I more than appreciate. Alas, the movie we ended up with is dreadful and a complete slog. This is, without question, one of 2024’s cinematic lowlights.

Joker: Folie à Deux is awful. It’s not interesting in the slightest, overstays its welcome by nearly an hour, and leaves you in a terrible place. The success of the first film enabled the sequel to more or less go anywhere the creative process could take it. The fact that this is the movie that resulted is almost mind-boggling. Aside from solid technical work behind the camera and a nice performance or two, there’s absolutely nothing here.

In the aftermath of the first film, Arthur Fleck/Joker (Joaquin Phoenix) is locked up in Arkham and awaiting a competency hearing before his murder trial. Escorted by the guards (including Brendan Gleeson) to his lawyer (Catherine Keener) in a minimum security wing, Arthur catches a glimpse of Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) in a music therapy class. He’s smitten, and when he’s allowed to take the class for good behavior, Lee is just as interested in him. Their relationship flourishes in musical interludes, while those around them debate if Arthur is mentally ill or just a monster.

Declared competent to stand trial, Arthur is more concerned initially with Lee having a good seat than what the case against him is. Lee has a plan for them both, which he goes along with, but as the trial proceeds, his lawyer argues that the separate Joker persona is to blame, while prosecutor Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) argues that Arthur is nothing more than a barbaric monster. How this all resolves I won’t spoil, but it’s deeply unsatisfying, actually building to a final moment that isn’t just awful, but could very well be insulting to fans.

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga are the least of the issues here, though neither gets much of a showcase. Phoenix is far more passive of a character here, only coming alive during the musical numbers. Gaga has a very underwritten Harley Quinn interpretation to play with, and while she gives it her all, no one could save the character. Her sining is a highlight, at least. The pair have no chemistry, so the “love story” is never believable. It’s actually depressing to see Brendan Gleeson and Catherine Keener given this little to do. It’s nice that they presumably got paid handsomely, but it’s criminal to neglect their talents. In addition to Harry Lawtey, the supporting cast includes returning players Zazie Beetz and Leigh Gill, as well as newcomers like Steve Coogan (wasted as well), Ken Leung, Jacob Lofland, and Sharon Washington.

Filmmaker Todd Phillips actively torpedoes good returning technical work from cinematographer Lawrence Sher and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, which is a real shame. Last time, with Joker, you left with the sense that Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver had seen The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver growing up, if not the sense that they fully got the point of those flicks. Joker: Folie à Deux makes Joker actually seem like The King of Comedy and Taxi Driver, by comparison. The musical numbers are bland and forgettable, the plot is threadbare, and the pacing nonexistent. Phillips’ direction lacks any sense of forward momentum, so by the time you reach the atrocious ending that he and Silver have cooked up, you’re long past the point of caring in the slightest.

Don’t expect the same type of awards attention this time around. I’d be very surprise for any above the line Oscar nominations, given the miserable lack of quality on display. Now, below the line, Guðnadóttir could once again be a factor in Best Original Score, while something like Best Production Design wouldn’t be crazy. Regardless, this flick will not be an Academy Award juggernaut, mark my words.

Joker: Folie à Deux is one of the worst films of the year, full stop. Fans of the first movie will be flummoxed by the choices made here, while anyone not previously on board won’t see anything worthwhile within. I hated nearly every moment of this film, which is something I rarely say. See it if you like and decide for yourself, but I never want to even think of this dreck ever again. Yuck.

SCORE: ★1/2

Related

A spate of documentaries focusing on the lives of Tejanos have found platforms over the last six months, showcasing how diverse, nuanced and entertaining our lives can be.

You can find the contemplative radicals of “Hummingbirds” trolling the streets of Laredo over on PBS; the determined detectives of “The Chicano Squad” solving crimes in Houston on A&E; and a dozen or so student musicians competing in “Going Varsity in Mariachi” on Netflix. On Max, the third episode of the Texas docuseries triptych “God Save Texas” takes an intimate and personal look at border life in El Paso, while Tubi has become the new home for “As I Walk Through the Valley,” an in-depth look at the history of rock ‘n’ roll in the Rio Grande Valley.

And that’s just what you can stream right now. “The In Between,” a doc about grief and reconnection set in the small border town of Eagle Pass, is currently making its way through the festival circuit and is set to air on PBS next spring. Even Texas Monthly is executive producing a documentary about iconic Tejano television host Johnny Canales. (Disclosure: De Los editorial director Fidel Martinez is featured in this project.)

As a border native, I’ve become used to a specific kind of narrative when it comes to how my homeland is depicted on screen, so this new wave of Tejano filmmaking is not only remarkable, it’s long overdue. But how did we get here?

The mainstreaming of Latino culture within the U.S. over the past decade has certainly helped, making it easier for filmmakers to convince streamers there’s an audience for their films. Alejandra Vasquez, a proud Tejana and one of the directors of the Sundance-award-winning “Going Varsity in Mariachi,” admits that Bad Bunny and other superstars are helpful for the broader Latinx media consumption moment, but more specifically, she says, people are just tired of the same sad story about the border being told over and over again. You know the type (Disney’s National Geographic has been making shows like “Border Security: America’s Front Line” and “Border Wars” since 2010): dour tales about violence, the hazards of immigration, and the frustrating politics that follow.

“Those of us who grew up near the border and who are intimately familiar with the cross-cultural exchange that is so inherent of living on the border are like, ’Hey, that’s not the only story, that’s not the only side to this,” said Vasquez, adding that she and co-director Sam Osborn deliberately wanted to make an underdog sports movie where the balls and jerseys were swapped out for music and sombreros. “We wanted to have people on the edge of their seats.”

Mario Diaz, who directed “The Chicano Squad,” agrees that there’s a fatigue that has set in for audiences but says there’s also a desire to be entertained by the stories they’re consuming.

“Latin audiences want to have a good time,” Diaz says, noting that he worked hard to incorporate both the important cultural context of Mexican immigration in Houston with cool crime-solving swagger in “The Chicano Squad.”

Perhaps then the stale story of the border, the one of tragedy and turmoil, has created an ever-growing audience of filmgoers hungry for border stories that are both nuanced, and dare I say, fun?

“I just don’t think we’ve been given the opportunity to tell these stories before,” Diaz said. “Now, because of our own making, we’re pushing these stories out into the world.”

Diaz, who hails from Puerto Rico but who has taken a shine to Tejanos and our stories (his next project is also based in Texas), argues that this moment is more than just a trend, and that it is one of the community’s own making. Vazquez says a small group of like-minded Tejano artists have started a private network online to share resources and know-how and to connect experts to continue growing the field. “No one else is giving us that opportunity,” she says. “Once we get together, things happen. We’re like, OK, let’s do it, vamos!”

Charlie Vela lived the DIY filmmaking experience when he and co-director Ronnie Garza made 2017’s “As I Walk Through the Valley,” a head-banging sociological sojourn through the punk rock music history of the Rio Grande Valley. When the duo began filming in earnest back in 2015, neither had any professional experience with filmmaking. They did, however, have a deep understanding of their subject and a scrappy get-it-done-no-matter-what attitude.

“We did our film for no money,” said Vela. The goal, he added, was to tell the story and entertain his friends. “That’s how I’ve sort of approached anything creative I’ve ever done and it’s yielded surprising results.”

Vela was shocked when the film was accepted into that year’s South by Southwest Film Festival, where it premiered on his daughter’s first birthday to critical praise and national media attention. The movie never found a buyer, but through co-director Garza’s grit and determination, the film now has a home on Tubi, where millions can stream it for free.

“I’m just relieved it’s in a place where it’s accessible,” Vela says. “And folks don’t have to hit us up for a link anymore.”

Both Vela and Vasquez point to institutions like the Laredo Film Society and Entre, a Rio Grande Valley-based cooperative community film center, as important spaces where production teams can find local staffers for projects, filmmakers and artists can network and audiences can see different types of storytelling about the border. LFS has existed in some form since 2015, while Entre was founded in 2021.

“We’re helping to better define border stories and stories in this region,” says Entre co-founder Andres Sanchez. “A lot of folks tend to speak for the border and this community and use a lot of harmful rhetoric. We’re trying to do justice to this place we call home.”

Filmmaker and former LFS board member Karen Gaytán says these spaces play a critical role in sustaining and growing the movement, but that they are just a piece of the puzzle. “I don’t think we’re there yet,” she says, “but I think we’re seeing a very exciting genesis that I hope continues to grow.”

Everyone I talked to agreed that even with the success of this wave of filmmaking, there are still plenty of obstacles to overcome.

Vasquez says she and her “Going Varsity in Mariachi” team were lucky to find producers who came onboard early to support the production, but they struggled to sell or get distribution for the film. The documentary, she was told, was both too Mexican and not Mexican enough.

“We hear it over and over as Tejanos” she said. Eventually, they were able to secure a licensing deal with Netflix for 42 months, which Vasquez says has been a blessing.

Just making sure audiences know these stories are available is a challenge, says Diaz, whose A&E series is the rare exception: a network-backed story that got a full marketing push. More common, he says, are projects that are completed and then put out on a platform without so much as a whisper. “Even if productions are getting funded,” he says, “you’d never know about them. It puts the onus on the audience and the community.”

And so, even if we are in the golden age of Tejano documentary filmmaking, everything is not quite golden. This moment, however, does seem to have a name. Back in March, Carlos A. Gutiérrez, the executive director of Cinema Tropical, a New York-based nonprofit focused on highlighting Latin American cinema in the U.S., wrote about how multiple Tejano filmmakers were “defying hegemonic narratives,” dubbing this collective body of work as the “Border New Wave.” He says it can be traced as far back to 2014 when El Paso native Cristina Ibarra debuted “Las Marthas,” a film that follows Laredo’s high society set as they prepare for an annual debutante ball and pageant. The doc originally aired on PBS and is now available to stream on Kanopy. The marker signifies the beginning of a tidy decade of diverse Tejano films that are being seen by more people than ever.

“It adds up,” Vela says, creating more and more examples of success for executives to begin to understand the gradients of stories that make up the border. Not that Tejano filmmakers are making these films for executives anyway. “Even though the economics are complicated, I would hate for someone locally who wants to tell a story, but is discouraged because they think ‘Oh, I’ll never get it distributed,’” Vela says. “If you just want to make it, you can make it.”

It seems there’s no better time.

Luis G. Rendon is a Tejano journalist who lives in New York City and writes about South Texas food and culture. He’s been published in Texas Monthly, Texas Highways and the Daily Beast. You can find him on Twitter/X @louiegrendon and Instagram @lrendon.

We also meet Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), Crassus’ deeply cynical financial reporter-girlfriend, who has her sights set on reuniting with Cesar, while Crassus’ son Clodio (Shia LaBeouf) spends his time partying, inciting civil unrest, and posing in front of American flags. The mayor’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), casually falls in love with Cesar after witnessing his ability to stop time. Yes, you read that correctly. When art is good, he explains, it resembles time stopping. 

Whether you find yourself capable of embracing the movie or not, you have to admire the 85-year-old Coppola’s go-for-it mentality here. Between the convoluted plot and the opulent visuals, you can recognize the influence of Fritz Lang (Metropolis), Stanley Kubrick (Dr. Strangelove), The Wachowskis (The Matrix and Cloud Atlas), George Lucas (Star Wars), Lars von Trier (Melancholia) and Fellini (Roma and Satyricon). Male characters wear toga-like garments; the women often wear flowing gowns. Cesar’s departed wife, Sunny Hope, haunts and inspires him. A Britney Spears-like character named Vesta Sweetwater appears, only to be undone by a deep-fake sex tape. American society descends into monochrome filth, as a Soviet era spacecraft hurtles toward the Earth. So many potential ideas. So many tangents. So many meaningless subplots. So little cohesion.

The actors’ line readings are just as undisciplined as the storytelling. Sometimes they speak in lofty tones, quoting Marcus Aurelius and William Shakespeare (including Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy). At other points, they speak in modern, derisive slang or in inflection-free outbursts. The eminent Dustin Hoffman, who plays Nush “The Fixer” Berman, fares very badly in that regard. Coppola veteran Laurence Fishburne, as Cesar’s driver and the film’s narrator, hardly registers. 

Mind you, Coppola does demonstrate vision here–vision, as in the opulent look of the film, with its rich color palette, architectural shapes, and wide array of special and stylistic effects. Cinematographer Mihai Malaimare, Jr. (The Master, Jojo Rabbit) bravely tries to match the director’s intentions. Unfortunately, his strong work often emphasizes the lack of rhythm and unfocused script, with many scenes choppily edited and almost discarded. 

As for the music, high marks go to Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov, one of the classical music world’s biggest stars of the past three decades. His orchestration is highly detailed, and his borrowings (Beethoven, Franz Liszt, Julius Fucik, Giacomo Puccini) are carefully chosen for effect. His Grammy Award-winning opera, Ainadamar, receives a new production at the Met in New York this fall.

Megalopolis has arrived on the scene with a wealth of negative advance publicity. An initial trailer with phony quotes from critics. A lawsuit filed by an extra. Production delays. All of those rewrites. Coppola himself has conceded that his movie may fail in the short term–it largely will–but he hopes that time will enhance its stature. 

If all of the above suggests a real dense, disorienting experience, you’re right. It will not leave you unmoved, one way or the other. Coppola passionately hopes to address several big-ticket issues in Megalopolis: the ills of technology, climate change, corporate takeovers, political apathy, cancel culture, his own relationship to art. Just like the creatively challenged Guido in Fellini’s masterpiece, 8½, Coppola wants to include “everything” in what’s probably his valedictory film. If only everything made more sense.