Quentin Tarantino loved ‘Joker: Folie à Deux,’ calls it a “f— you to Hollywood”
Most viewers have rejected “Joker: Folie à Deux” — the film currently has dismal 32% scores on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and audiences alike, an unusual consensus on this sort of thing, and is on track to lose over $150m — but it does have one high-profile fan: Quentin Tarantino.
During an appearance on author Bret Easton Ellis’ podcast (via Variety), the Academy Award-winning “Pulp Fiction” filmmaker effusively praised Todd Phillips’ musical “Joker” sequel. “I really, really liked it, really. A lot. Like, tremendously, and I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the filmmaking,” Tarantino said. “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. I really liked the musical sequences. I got really caught up. I thought the more banal the songs were, the better they were. I find myself listening to the lyrics of ‘For Once in My Life’ in a way I never have before.”
Tarantino said he appreciated that “Joker 2” seems influenced by “Natural Born Killers,” the controversial classic he wrote for director Oliver Stone, comparing Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) and Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) to star-crossed spree killers Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) and calling “Joker 2” “the ‘Natural Born Killers’ I would have dreamed of seeing.” (This is in stark contrast to Paul Schrader, whose screenplay for “Taxi Driver” heavily influenced the first “Joker,” who recently said he walked out of “Joker 2,” came back, then walked out again.)
Tarantino also said the movie is very funny, and his laughter filled the “almost empty IMAX theater” where he saw it “without bothering anybody.” He praised Phoenix’s performance as “one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in my life in this movie,” before commending Phillips for his Joker-like, nihilistic audacity.
“The Joker directed the movie. The entire concept, even him spending the studio’s money — he’s spending it like the Joker would spend it, all right?” Tarantino said. “And then his big surprise gift — haha! — the jack-in-the-box, when he offers you his hand for a handshake and you get a buzzer with 10,000 volts shooting you — is the comic book geeks. 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. He’s saying f— you to anybody who owns any stock at DC and Warner Brothers […] And Todd Phillips is the Joker. Un film de Joker, all right, is what it is. He is the Joker.”
Tarantino enjoyed the sequel more than the original, which he found “one-note” until the climactic moment when Fleck shoots talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro), which he called “one of the best scenes made in the last 20 years, of this century. Easily! The whole movie was worth it for that.”
“Joker: Folie à Deux” is in theaters now, and also just debuted on video on demand, if you’d like to see what all the fuss is about.