Watching Joker: Folie à Deux made me realize more and more that the real joker was me. I say that because I FOOLISHLY decided to watch this mess. For a musical, it just feels afraid to be one.

The beginning of the movie was honestly kind of good. The opening scene is a genuinely cool cartoon showing the protagonist, Arthur Fleck’s, shadow being terrible to him in some thematically important ways. However, as soon as Arthur began speaking in what was supposed to be his mother’s voice in his head ten minutes later, the movie just sucked for me. Over two dozen songs were force-fed into this movie, so it felt more like a Disney children’s animated flop from when the good writers were on strike.

Lady Gaga’s talents are completely wasted on this movie. Even as the secondary character, Lee, she doesn’t affect the plot at all until the very end. It seems like they only made the movie to draw some music out of her for their own personal listening. Which may be funny to think about, but feels like a $200 million mistake. That’s why I say that it’s afraid to commit to being a full musical. It’s more of a two-and-a-quarter-hour music video.

I am far from the only person who doesn’t like this movie. While the first of the two is rated 68% on Rotten Tomatoes and 4.4/5 stars off Google’s rating feature, this film is 32% and 1.8 respectively, which is an extremely significant difference. Even the higher-ups behind the scenes have admitted to regretting creating this mistake of a sequel, so why should anyone lend it their watching time?