If you were to buy a ticket to The Critic, the recently released film in which Ian McKellen plays an old, curmudgeonly theatre critic, you’d expect to see the typical markers of a period British drama at the very least. It’s fairly reasonable not to expect Ian McKellen to break into song in every scene. If you bought a ticket to Joker: Folie a Deux, Wonka or Mean Girls however, you got a completely different experience than first advertised. This is the new trend, or at the very least the hidden trend that is emerging from Hollywood where movie musicals are being shadow marketed to audiences.
Afraid of alienating audiences, none of the above movies that were released in the past 12 months were outwardly marketed as a musical, but instead appealed to their core target audiences; Marvel fans, families and female cinemagoers respectively. Joker Folie a Deux is the third film in the past year that has largely hidden the fact that it was a musical – Wonka and Mean Girls also bizarrely took this approach. Mean Girls was a massive shock to audiences, those acquainted with the original comedic modern classic did not expect the cast to start singing despite the movie having had a successful broadway run for years. Wonka on the other hand fared better, whilst not marketed as a musical, audiences had an easier time seeing Willy Wonka break into song.
Joker Folie a Deux is the latest film to take this clandestine approach to marketing, essentially leaving the performance of a film up to the audience gods. Film For Thought was a massive fan of the original Joker it completely blew me away at the time and actually gave me a bit of faith in Marvel as a vehicle for more films like these. It was the perfect mix of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, it posed interesting questions about society, about mental health, about appearances, all wrapped up in this fantastic anti-hero character. It was all underscored by a dark, and devastating musical score. The sequel unfortunately did not hit the mark, and despite great performances from Phoenix and Brendan Gleeson and the prevalence of that lovely gritty feel, it was messed with narrative wise by the musical element. It was for all intents and purposes a musical, something that had failed to be highlighted in any promotional material.
In the screening the first few musical numbers people really embraced and were eager to see it progress, but people grew fatigued by the end. Loyal fans of the original understandably felt like they had been duped. You could feel the palpable annoyance in the room, sighs and people disengaging completely as more and more songs were rolled out. It kind of reminded me of when I watched old Marx Brothers movies and you’d be falling around the place laughing at the skits, and then the minute Harpo started playing piano we’d stick the kettle on so you could come back and the song would be over. The songs were just irrelevant fillers, they weren’t the main attraction. The musical numbers not only lacked any real spark (it’s difficult to even remember the name or tunes of any), but they did not reveal character or move the plot forward like all the best ones do. Unfortunately, as the fundamentals of the musical element were lacking, it made an already weak script stand out more because there was nothing to anchor around in the first place.
It is bemusing how the studio handled this roll out, with Warners clearly trying to placate current audiences while trying to bring in the female cohort with Gaga in the lead. It is of course admirable that they have done something different, for pushing the boundaries of what is expected in Hollywood but to me this genre mash up just seemed tonally wrong. With a D Cinema Score and a disappointing opening weekend, it demonstrates how such a move can really bamboozle people, particularly a loyal audience like the one that Joker had. Could Joker: Folie a Deux have been saved if it said from the get go what it really was and showed its true face? Perhaps, but we’ll never know and that’s life.
FILM FOR THOUGHT 