Quentin Tarantino has heaped praise on Todd Phillips’s divisive comic book sequel Joker: Folie à Deux, saying of the box office flop: “I really, really liked it, really. A lot. Like, tremendously.”
The Pulp Fiction director, 61, even compared the film to one of his own scripts, saying it was like a version of Natural Born Killers he “would have dreamed of seeing” before it was altered and eventually directed by Oliver Stone.
Speaking on American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis’s podcast, Tarantino said: “I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the film-making but I thought it was going to be an arms-length, intellectual exercise that ultimately I wouldn’t think worked like a movie, but that I would appreciate it for what it is. And I’m just nihilistic enough to kind of enjoy a movie that doesn’t quite work as a movie or that’s like a big, giant mess to some degree.
“And I didn’t find it an intellectual exercise. I really got caught up into it.”
Tarantino went on to say that Joaquin Phoenix had given “one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life,” and argued that Phillips had embraced the spirit of the movie in his work. “The Joker directed the movie,” said Tarantino. “The entire concept, even him spending the studio’s money – he’s spending it like the Joker would spend it, all right? … He’s saying f*** you to all of them. He’s saying f*** you to the movie audience. He’s saying f*** you to Hollywood.”
Tarantino added that he found Joker: Folie à Deux to be a “really funny” film and that he “really liked the musical sequences”.
Joker: Folie à Deux flopped at the box office. While the original film grossed over $1bn when it was released in 2019, its sequel appears to be struggling to recoup the $190m to £200m budget it cost to make. The film has made a reported $120m to date.
The Independent gave it rare praise, with film critic Geoffrey Macnab awarding the film four stars in a review that reads in part: “The darkness at the core of the film is underlined by its very brutal ending, which rejects comic book conventions in favour of psychological depth.
“Phoenix’s performance remains powerful and stirring, too. The genius of it is that we can’t help but care for Arthur despite his neediness and derangement.”
Taxi Driver writer Paul Schrader was among those who diagreed. He said in an interviewthat he walked out after around 10 or 15 minutes, bought something, came back for another 10 minutes and decided: “That was enough.”
