"Joker: Folie á Deux" flopped at the box office on opening weekend as the sequel took an approach that seemingly appealed to no one.

“Joker: Folie à Deux” added Lady Gaga; musical elements logically followed. So did a Venice premiere, itself a repeat of the original. And that’s when history stopped repeating itself: Where “Joker” won the festival’s Golden Lion, the sequel received a critical beat-down that echoed all the way to the $40 million-or-less opening weekend.

Folie à Deux,” the Joker’s star-crossed lover Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) asks her beau: “Isn’t this more fun than a movie?” Quinzel may be right to distinguish “Folie à Deux,” which consists primarily of Joaquin Phoenix smoking cigarettes in aesthetic lighting and rasping jazz standards,