Todd Phillips’ Joker Folie a Deux posed as an ambitious extension of the Joker’s storyline but fell short in its execution. According to the title it should be a duet — but co-star Lady Gaga is merely a supporting character. It wants to be a musical, but the script is too shy to actually break into a performance number. The original Joker, released in 2019, should have been a stand-alone film, but instead Phillips made a sequel.

Released on Oct. 4 of this year with returning star of Joker (2019) Joaquin Phoenix and new co-star Gaga, Joker Folie a Deux opens with an animation that serves as a metaphor for the rest of the film. Arthur Fleck, dressed as the Joker, arrives at a theater where he hosts a talk show, but is quickly thwarted and imprisoned by his own shadow — the darker side of his dual identity, the Joker. The cops arrive after a mess lies in the Joker’s wake, and Arthur’s shadow ties itself back to his body, but it is Arthur who takes the fall for his alter ego’s menacing behavior.

The rest of the film largely follows Arthur’s court case in which he is being charged with the death penalty as his lawyer desperately tries to make the argument for Arthur’s split personality, otherwise known as borderline personality disorder. Before the audience gets to see any events unfolding in the courtroom — and there aren’t many — there is a lot of anticipation building that never quite arrives.

Following the events of the first movie, Arthur is in Arkham Asylum, the fictional psychiatric hospital of the DC Comic universe — the only reference to the DC universe in the film. He has been presenting very good behavior and doing as he’s told; he even tells jokes to the guards in exchange for cigarettes. As a reward for his decorum, he is taken to the least secure facility within the hospital for music sessions, where he meets Gaga’s Lee Quinzel — her character based on Harley Quinn — and they kick off a love affair.

Only then, after a quarter of the movie has gone by, some degree of momentum begins to pick up. Arthur relentlessly hums throughout the film — an indicator of the movie’s shyness in accepting itself as a musical — and is dragged from the asylum to court and back again. Lee meanwhile is discharged, and after leaving the asylum she engages in several interviews about Arthur’s “Joker” persona, only intensifying the rebellion he accidentally spurred in the first movie. Footage of Lee’s supposed interviews and city-wide uprisings outside the courtroom that are mentioned but never shown would have helped to propel the plot, but instead these events are just alluded to in hallway conversations. It seems that Phillips made a choice to contextualize the narrative rather than deepen it.

Starting Oct. 29, Joker Folie a Deux will be available for rent or purchase on streaming services — not even a month after its theatrical release. Reflecting a record box office revenue outcome, this early release to streaming seems to be in an attempt to correct the film’s loss of money. With a $200 million production budget, and additional $100 million marketing efforts, the box office grossing was at a shy $165 million worldwide — far from the $450 million necessary to break even, as studios and theaters usually split the ticket sales. The undeniable flop may be attributed to the negative reviews the movie saw following its release at film festivals, effectively killing the public’s anticipatory excitement.

Whether Arthur Fleck is deemed guilty or not, it ultimately doesn’t matter, just like the actors’ dedication and good camera angles don’t save the script — in a mess of events, the death of the Joker’s allure is tied to Arthur’s pathetic attitude. Unlike the first movie, Folie a Deux is uncommitted to anything it proposes itself to be, and the plot feels empty at its core. Phillips’ seemingly careless conclusion to his sequel justifies its lackluster reception.