Joker: Folie à Deux
Joker:  Madness for Two

***** SPOILERS!!  DON'T BLAME ME IF YOU KEEP READING!! ****   

Well, this was on HBO MAX that I get with my cell subscription, so I decided to watch.  I'd read some "not good" opinions a couple months ago, so i tried to avoid more critical pieces until i got to see it for myself.

Overall, if I'd paid money to see this in a theater, it would have been the first movie I ever asked for a refund and before I got to the middle.

Really, if I wanted to watch a musical, I would have picked one with more than just one talented singer and numbers i could appreciate. 

I think the first Joker movie tricked me by not divulging Arthur (Joker) was hallucinating much of the movie until near the end.  Kind of a 6th Sense feel where the things that happened suddenly fell into place.  This sequel made me think that it's the writers and directors hallucinating, not Arthur.  i was confused in the first half what was real and what was imaginary.  The second half, i just quit guessing since none of the imaginary stuff really mattered to the plot line.  I just accepted that 80% pf the musical numbers were going to be fantasy, and the rest was real -- and mostly real bad.

The ending really sucked, too -- an ending that took way too much time to show us.  And i had to read about what the psycho that stabbed Arthur at the end was doing, because the scene was poorly filmed.  i suspect we are supposed to see that ending as a setup for a new Joker -- the psycho that shanked him -- but too much was left up to assumptions and guesswork.  Again, the writers were in a fantasy land, and somehow we are supposed to know    the scenes are supposed to convey.

Rotten tomatoes and other rating sites have this sitting solidly at 4.5 out of 10 stars.  i think that's giving 4 stars to Lady Gaga's performance and half a star for the movie overall.  Gaga is a real stage presence, and the musical numbers played to her strengths.  A stronger storyline for her character might have gotten her over the 5 star hump.

I can't imagine watching this without having seen the original.  The call backs to the first film helped a little, but only a little.  They recalled the murders, shooting Murray Franklin on national TV, and the coworker he killed in his apartment.  Not a lot more than those scenes, and no detail at all. Like i said, you need to see the first film to get any real tie-in to this one.

Joker had so much more to captivate the imagination and then throw you a curve or two.  This one just seemed like they wanted to showcase Gaga, so they incorporated music and singing in probably half the runtime or more.

If anyone else has seen this, i'd be interested in your thoughts and opinions.  Were my expectations too high due to the first film?