Taika Waititi has criticized film critics following the poor commercial performance of Klara and the Sun, his adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel.
In a social media post, Waititi described critics as “sad lost souls” who had failed to become artists. He also said that the same people had disliked his 2019 film Jojo Rabbit, dismissing their opinions as “irrelevant”, “out of touch” and “obsolete”.
Waititi pointed to the difference between audience and critic scores for Klara and the Sun on Rotten Tomatoes. The film had an audience score of 74%, compared with 26% from 90 reviews. He said he had not read reviews of his own work or that of his peers for almost 15 years, adding that he listened to “the people”.
Klara and the Sun reportedly cost $44m to produce. It earned $701,000 during its opening weekend in North America, averaging just under $800 per cinema across 880 venues and placing 16th at the box office. Its second weekend brought a further 79% drop, with the film taking $145,000 from a similar number of locations.
The film posted similarly weak figures in the UK, where it opened with £176,000 from 368 venues, an average of £477 per cinema.
Reviews have also been largely negative. The Guardian’s chief critic Peter Bradshaw awarded the film one star, calling it “unbearably mannered” and “unspeakably acted”. He described it as “soft-centred sci-fi-lite” and also previously gave a negative review to Jojo Rabbit.
Writing in the Observer, Wendy Ide called Klara and the Sun “a thin and cloying thing” that replaced the depth of Ishiguro’s source material with self-conscious quirkiness. The Los Angeles Times’ Tim Grierson said Waititi covered the film in a “calculated gooeyness” that became exasperating.
Sources: The Guardian Film.