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‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Review: Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga Star in a Cracked Jukebox Musical — but It Doesn’t Let Joker Be Joker Enough


"Joker 2" has an audacious concept, but the execution is less so in a movie that takes a step back from the danger of "Joker."

Arthur responds by singing, in a dry cracked voice, “I’m wild again, beguiled again…,” launching into “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” from the 1940 musical “Pal Joey.” If you’re surprised to hear him reach into such an old-time song book, get used to it. His lawyer, played by that tough nut Catherine Keener, argues that Arthur didn’t really commit the crimes, because he’s got a split personality, a deranged alter ego, a hidden identity that takes him over. In our era, the movie that rewrote the rules of that experience was “Moulin Rouge!” The beauty, the insolence, the aesthetic collisions (the fact that fin de siècle Paris dancers and bohemians were singing “Lady Marmalade” and “Your Song”) was all part of the transcendence.

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