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*Spoiler Warning* But I do not recommend you see this movie anyway.

This was actually bad, and not even fun bad. A dull triple failure as a musical, a visual spectacle, and social commentary. Director Phillips seems to be trying to deny the audience the satisfaction or release from the first one, an audacious move admittedly, but he seems to be so excessively focused with breaking down the culture surrounding the first movie that he forgot about building an identity for the already unnecessary sequel.

This movie is an unfortunate cluster of decent ideas that never go anywhere – there is a lot of potential in focusing the movie on the trial of both Arthur and Joker, and effectively putting the first movie and both groups of people who condemn and worship it on a metaphorical trial, but for a movie so obsessed with the idea of madness, it never tries to do anything creative with it’s presentation, nor does it try to convey any themes beyond the well-treaded ground already laid by the first one.

Almost every flaw from the first movie is magnified to oblivion in this one. Gaga and Phoenix try their very best to bring some life to this movie amidst a rally of horrifically dull and superficial performances, but no amount of acting could save this script. Not that I want to malign any actor’s role in this movie, because I simply don’t think they could’ve done much with the flat characters they were given.

Let’s talk about this movie being a sort of half musical for a moment here, because I think the movie’s reluctance to embrace its status as a musical is one of its biggest failures. Before anything else, the music is bad. I already do not care for jukebox musicals, and the arrangements in this one were nothing to write home about. The song choices also did nothing to help, nor did the movie attempt to make use of any set-pieces, choreography, or cinematography to make these “musical” numbers less of a chore to sit through. At least The Greatest Showman (2017), another musical movie which I despise, had some catchy songs and wasn’t afraid to call itself a musical. Perhaps Phillips was afraid calling the movie a musical movie would detract from the gravity of its themes – a fear that is thoroughly unfounded, because Les Misérables (2012), with all its musical failures, was (in my opinion) still able to adequately reflect the oppressive reality of early 1800s France.

The movie also doubly fails in its secondary identity of being a courtroom drama. Perhaps if the movie was set in Gotham, and not New York City (which, why?), I would give some more leeway to the blatant lack of attention paid to proper legal procedures in this movie, but as it currently stands, Legally Blonde (2001) runs circles around this movie. I’d argue the Bee Movie courtroom scene is better too – at least I was mildly entertained during that!

There is some argument to be made in defence of this movie – that it was attempting to present these characters in a more “realistic” way without the burden of the already established DC canon. I don’t know how much I agree with that, since this movie is perfectly happy to have scenes dedicated to him wearing the clown makeup. Not to mention the goodwill of the first movie was mostly built up by the fact that they “did something new” with a comic book character. This was also why I found the first one to be tolerable – not that I was ever a massive fan of the first one, but I appreciated that they were at least trying to do something new to a mainstream audience – or at least within a comic book context. I wasn’t going into this movie thinking that Arthur was going to become the crime prince that the Joker was in movies like The Dark Knight (2008), but I was expecting them to do at least something with the character.

So let’s take this movie on its own terms. Let’s shed all the frankly embarrassing references to the Batman universe and evaluate this movie as an independent film, akin to something A24 would distribute and/or release. Is it really all that great? Is the movie’s portrayal of continued, explicit mistreatment and abuse of a mentally ill man thrust into the oppressive incarceration system really making any sort of statement that the first one did not already make? After all, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Girl, Interrupted (1999) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994) would delve into the lives of those living in incarceration or oppressive psychiatric facilities with far more grace and nuance. There was an opportunity here to make some point about how people latch on to an image of deeply troubled image without acknowledging their humanity, especially with Gaga’s character, but this was again never explored to satisfaction.

I can’t help but think the movie might have an easier time being at least half decent if they just followed the established backstory of Harley Quinn being Joker’s psychologist in Arkham. Maybe then the movie would at least have some semblance of a plot since Phillips so clearly has no clue where to take the story. I’m just throwing out some random ideas here, but perhaps some experimentation with a role reversal of Lee being the manipulative one instead of the Joker. Another direction could involve portraying the trial through the perspective of Lee or those who malign or worship the Joker throughout the trial, and only finally centering on Arthur in the final scene.

I will give it to Phillips that this movie doesn’t seem to take heavy inspiration from other (better!) movies this time, but the result is that this film is a floundering, boring mess that doesn’t know what it wants to be or wants to say. A thorough waste of two hours and a sad reminder that I probably should’ve watched The Substance instead.