‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ debuts to standing ovation at Venice Film Fest, but uneven reviews

Joaquin Phoenix and 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 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.”

The Hollywood Reporter‘s critic David Rooney called Gaga a “compelling live-wire presence,” but complained that the overall movie is “often dour.”

He adds, “Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver in the first Joker had the sturdy bones of not one but two Martin Scorsese films, Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy, on which to hang their story and set their tone,” but the sequel, “is built on more of a conceit than a solid story foundation.”

Vanity Fair‘s reviewer Richard Lawson described the movie as “startlingly dull” and “a pointless procedural that seems to disdain its audience,” while the BBC’s Nicholas Barber 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.”

However, The Wrap‘s William Bibbiani called it “impressively odd,” and although he dinged the film — “even the title screams ‘film student trying too hard'” — the critic hailed the performances of Phoenix and Gaga, concluding of the sequel, “It’s genuinely a little daring, genuinely a little challenging, and genuinely a little genuine.”

Empire magazine’s John Nugent called the film “a genuinely original narrative.” Deadline‘s Pete Hammond praised 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.”

We’ll see which camp the audience agrees with when Joker: Folie à Deux opens in theaters on Oct. 4.