Lady Gaga‘s new movie, Joker: Folie à Deux, earned a lot of “Applause” at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 4, but the reviews are another story.
Variety reports that after the movie’s world premiere, the audience gave director Todd Phillips‘ sequel, starring Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck/Joker and Gaga as Harley Quinn, an 11-minute standing ovation. But over at RottenTomatoes.com, about half the reviews are “rotten.”
Vanity Fair called it “startlingly dull,” “a pointless procedural that seems to disdain its audience” and complained that Gaga is “woefully underused.” The BBC called it a “dreary, underwhelming, unnecessary slog,” but noted that it was a “welcome opportunity to hear Gaga belting out some of the most romantic standards in the American Songbook.”
The Hollywood Reporter said Gaga is a “compelling live-wire presence,” but complained that the overall movie is “often dour.”
Variety described the film as “overly cautious” and said Gaga is “drastically underused” — her character “never quite takes wing.” The publication adds, “Gaga never gets a chance to do what she did in A Star Is Born: seize the audience with her rapture.”
While The Wrap called it “impressively odd,” The Times derided it as “messy, lifeless and derivative.”
However, Empire magazine calls it “a genuinely original narrative.” Deadline praises it as a “brilliant musical return to a world of madness,” adding, “With song, dance, comedy, darkness, animation, drama, violence and more, this is a musical — if it even is a musical — like no other.”
Aside from the reviews and the standing ovation, the other Venice development was that Gaga and her fiancé, Michael Polansky, made their red carpet debut at the event, with Gaga wearing a massive headpiece.
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