When watching (or, in some cases, rewatching) all of Martin Scorsese’s films last year in preparation for Killers of the Flower Moon, I noted with interest that the legendary director followed up his controversial classic Taxi Driver (one half of the recipe for Todd Phillips' Joker) with a romantic musical about a pair of musicians entangled in an ill-fated relationship that can't sustain their shared fame and success—or lack thereof. By this point, Joker: Folie à Deux was already assumed, if not outright confirmed, to be a musical, and it seemed as though Phillips was going to continue his Scorsese homage—or grift, depending on your tolerance for imitation—with the sequel to his Oscar-winning, box office record-setting 2019 blockbuster. But unlike its predecessor, which fuses the tone and disposition of Taxi Driver with the basic plot of King of Comedy, slapping bankable IP clown makeup on the concoction, Folie à Deux does not have a Scorsese masterwork as its road map, and it suffers because of it.

We pick up with our pitiful protagonist Arthur Fleck—once again portrayed by a discomfortingly skinny Joaquin Phoenix—who has been reduced to telling jokes in exchange for cigarettes from the abusive guards at Arkham State Hospital as he awaits his role in “the trial of the century.” An exhausted Catherine Keener plays Arthur’s lawyer, desperately trying to craft the narrative that Arthur suffers from split personality disorder and should evade the death penalty because of it. After all, Arthur didn’t kill those five people—really six, as Arthur reminds us multiple times throughout the movie—“Joker” did. But since the events of the first film, “Joker” has become more than just a man; he’s a martyr and a symbol for Gotham's downtrodden. So even if Arthur’s defense requires him not to be “Joker,” or even if Arthur himself no longer wants to be “Joker,” the people demand it.

Looking to attach himself to the media frenzy surrounding his favorite “patient” to torment, a guard (played by the always commanding Brendan Gleeson) enrolls Arthur in a music class at Arkham, where Arthur encounters Harleen Quinzel—though she is almost exclusively referred to as “Lee” in the film. Despite sharing the name of her comic book counterpart, Phillips doesn't feel the need to use it. Lady Gaga lends her respectable acting skills and phenomenal singing ability to the role, though ironically, this musical makes more room for the former than the latter.

Folie à deux, in addition to being the name of the fourth Fall Out Boy album, refers to “shared madness,” particularly in the case of two closely associated people—a fitting subtitle for a film that introduces Joker’s historical main squeeze. Arthur and Lee quickly fall in love, giving Arthur the companionship he has always longed for, but there's an almost instantly sinister undertone to Lee’s affection. A clear Joker fanatic—who proclaims she watched the made-for-TV movie about Arthur at least a few dozen times—Lee has little fondness or patience for the failed comedian shuffling through Arkham as a shell of a man. No, she wants the “real” Arthur.

Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in 'Joker: Folie à Deux' Warner Bros. Pictures via MovieStillsDB

The pair's love—or madness (what’s the difference?)—is conveyed through unimaginative musical sequences, often shot against a black void of shadow and cut off as quickly as they begin. Phillips has no interest or aptitude for staging musical numbers, wasting the talents of cinematographer Lawrence Sher, who is doing his damnedest to visually elevate these stale sequences with the little time Phillips allows him. The decision to make this sequel a musical seems motivated solely by the overarching ethos of the film: to make everyone who loved the first movie hate Folie á Deux. Like most contemporary musicals, the marketing for the film has strategically sidestepped its melodic constitution at almost every turn. But unlike, say, this year’s Mean Girls remake, Folie á Deux isn’t trying to disguise its song-and-dance nature so much as it is trying to conceal the fact that, at its core, the film is a courtroom drama—a very boring and tedious courtroom drama, at that.

Despite casting one of the most talented musicians of her era as Harley Quinn and forcing its Joker to dust off the singing voice he so eloquently used in his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Johnny Cash, Phillips seems far more interested in putting Joker (and by extension, himself) on trial. So much of Folie á Deux’s 138 minutes is spent relitigating the events of the first film on a surface level, giving Phillips a meta-textual soapbox to respond to the legacy of the first film. Before Joker could even reach theaters in 2019, it had already become a cultural lightning rod, with pundits speculating about the potential violence a film about the clown prince of crime could inspire. Phillips, who claimed he was intending to make a film about the state of comedy, has clearly taken issue with Joker being labeled an incel dog whistle.

From official warnings issued by the United States Army about possible violence to the lingering trauma of the 2012 Aurora, Colorado, shootings at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, Joker was steeped in an atmosphere of concern so palpable that I found myself watching the movie alone on opening night after all my friends backed out. At the time, Phillips dismissed the controversy as far-left outrage, but in the years since, Joker has attracted a cult of worshippers who felt represented by a mentally ill man, abandoned and failed by the systems meant to protect him, who enacts violent revenge on the society that bore him.

As someone who loathes the first Joker—partially because it’s a Scorsese rip-off masquerading as a comic book movie for maximum ROI, but mainly because it exemplifies Hollywood’s lucrative path of regurgitating stories with an intellectual property filter (catch "What if Penguin Were Tony Soprano" on HBO this Sunday)—the idea of Phillips turning on the people who championed the first Joker is, in theory, an audacious move I should respect. Folie á Deux doesn’t just subvert fan expectations, it shanks them in a prison hallway and laughs as they bleed out on the floor. The film goes out of its way to enforce the notion that Arthur Fleck is a man to be pitied rather than a symbol to be worshipped. But for this $200 million rebellion against its target audience to work, Folie á Deux would have to offer something—anything—of substance or even basic entertainment value in its stead.

If Joker was Todd Phillips playing a big joke on casual audiences, tricking geeks and nerds into theaters in droves to watch the kind of 70s crime movies Phillips grew up on, then Joker: Folie á Deux is an even bigger joke aimed squarely at the same people who left the theater clamoring for more. You think the Joker represents you? Well, guess what? He’s a loser, and you’re a loser too. You want me to make another one? Well, now it’s a musical because “everyone hates musicals.” If Todd Phillips’ take on the Joker has one thing going for it, at least it represents the character in spirit if never in execution. But simply by existing, Folie á Deux instantly invalidates both itself and its predecessor, becoming a nearly two-and-a-half-hour explanation of a joke that—much like the jokes of its main character—wasn’t that funny to begin with.