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Joker: Folie à Deux is really about its director. Todd Phillips surged to Hollywood power with huge frat comedy hits—Old School (2003), The Hangover (2009), Borat (2006)—and then, about a decade ago, decided he needed to be taken seriously. Desperate to escape the gilded prison of constructing big-budget laugh factories, he made a thinky thriller about illegal arms sales, War Dogs (2016), and then 2019's Joker—a puzzlingly beloved, realist take on Batman's arch-villain that was short on reasons to exist.
The sequel is a dirgelike deconstruction of the first movie, which sometimes flirts with old-school musical bombast...
. John Wilmes.
