Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga sing an out of tune duet

There's a famous old Bee Gees hit that begins: “I started a joke that made the whole world cry.” This is as good a sentiment as any to describe the new joker Continuation, subtitled with little promise Slide for two.

Full of misery, it's basically the jukebox musical from hell. Joaquin Phoenix, reprising his Oscar-winning performance from the controversial 2019 film, croaks through a selection of standards in a voice that might remind you of the late Joe Cocker or the sound of glass breaking into small crystals in the garbage disposal pieces is shredded.

Meanwhile, co-star Lady Gaga, an eccentric, electrifying singer who would have triumphed in the Golden Age of American musicals, was encouraged to curb her energy to embrace the film's grit and grit. It's like hiring Liza Minnelli to play a chimney sweep. Most of her singing has a fragile hesitation, as if she's unsure how hard to strain her voice when practicing in choir.

They will be happy and grateful for the few moments when she gets to release a number or part of it. But film doesn't want you to be happy.

The story is simple. Joker, aka Arthur Fleck, is on trial for all the murder and mayhem he caused in the first film. His defense attorney (Catherine Keener), tough but compassionate, believes he can get some kind of deal if a jury can be convinced that his Joker persona is just that – a monstrous identity concocted in the cauldron of a nervous breakdown. The defense will, of course, argue that there is no difference: either way, the man is toxic garbage.

As an alternate juror in the audience, you may think that everyone in the trial should be held in contempt. Joker and Arthur are yin and yang – why argue about it? Why treat them like an egg yolk, separated from the white and passed back and forth between shell halves, when they are the same spectacularly broken, rotten egg?

The film also offers the potential of a romance that will allow the Joker to reach increasingly insane heights of cruel madness – falling in love with Harley Quinn (previously played by Margot Robbie in). suicide squad), a moon-eyed superfan who wants him to go full throttle in the role of the supervillain that fate intended him to be. For his Hitler she would be Eva Braun.

So you have the film foil for two, two delusional personalities who paradoxically feed off each other and grow together. If director Todd Phillips had figured out how to create a real connection of heart and mind between these two weirdos, joker could have been a breathtakingly disturbing tale of erotic and spiritual passion, distorted yet true.

But the chemistry between Phoenix and Gaga is far from right. To give the film the scant credit it deserves, his performance actually deepened compared to the first film – the strain of maudlin masochism he explored to its most excruciating depths joker This time it suggests a tragic grandeur, something closer to Heather Ledger's 2012 take on Joker (still the best). The Dark Knight.

But Gaga is dully serious, struggling to keep up with her co-star's tortured inner gaze. It's a terrible disappointment after her exciting, lively turn as an Italian wife with homicidal thoughts House of Gucci. But this appearance was purely external, with the garish conspicuousness of costume jewelry. Joaquin pretty much overwhelms her here.

What makes matters worse is, as already mentioned, Gaga's restraint in the music, which is also consistently crude, ugly and rancid. Well, what else? would Is it them in a film that is also crude, ugly and rancid?

And yet even that problem should have been surmountable, especially with Gaga's gargantuan talent – a song delivered and directed with verve, verve and wit can thrive in the worst-case scenarios. There are Cabaret, a worm-ridden, acidic movie musical that still won a ton of Oscars. There is even South Park: Bigger, longer and uncut.

In the end there is nothing in it film is as good as Gaga's accompanying album, Harlequin. In this collection of (mostly) pop classics, she sings in a confident swing style with an unexpected touch of bitterness and panic. It is Judy at Carnegie Hall for Generation Z.

Joker: Folie à Deux is now in the cinema.