Paul Schrader calls ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ a really bad musical

Paul Schrader, a still from ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’

Hollywood writer-director Paul Schrader says he couldn’t survive Joker: Folie a Deux for more than 20 minutes.

The Taxi Driver scriptwriter said the sequel, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga and directed by Todd Phillips, was a really bad musical.

The film, a sequel to the 2019 movie, has received negative reviews and stands to lose between USD 150 million to USD 200 million at the box office, according to Variety.

Schrader’s Taxi Driver reportedly served as an inspiration for the first part of the movie, based on the eponymous DC Comics villain.

When Jeremy O Harris of the Interview magazine asked Schrader what he had seen recently, the filmmaker said, “I see who’s coming up. I go to the multiplex. I saw ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’.

“I saw about 10 or 15 minutes of it. I left, bought something, came back, saw another 10 minutes. That was enough.” Harris asked the filmmaker whether he had seen “Emilia Perez”, Schrader said he had missed it at Cannes.

Schrader once again recalled his experience of “Joker 2” when Harris proclaimed that he loved musicals.

“Well, that’s what Joker is, kind of. It’s a really bad musical,” the writer-director replied.

Harris asked him what made the film so bad for Schrader, to which the director replied, “I don’t like either of those people. I don’t like them as actors. I don’t like them as characters. I don’t like the whole thing. I mean, those are people who, if they came to your house, you’d slip out the back door.”

There was a lot of buzz around Joker: Folie à Deux due to the massive business the previous film had done by earning USD 1 billion at the box office.

It also won Phoenix the Oscar for best actor but the sequel received negative reviews right after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The sequel also opened to a dismal USD 37 million at the ticket window.