Taika Waititi has publicly criticised reviewers following the poor commercial performance of his latest film, Klara and the Sun, an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel. In a social media post, he described critics as “sad lost souls” who failed to become artists and instead became reviewers.
Waititi wrote: “This Halloween, let’s spare a thought for those sad lost souls who couldn’t achieve their dreams of becoming artists, and thus settled, and became critics.” He added: “The same people who also hated Jojo Rabbit … Irrelevant. Out of touch. Obsolete. In the bin.”
Audience vs Critics Scores
The director highlighted the disparity between the film's audience and critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes, which currently stand at 74% for the former and 26% (from 90 reviews) for the latter. He also stated: “I haven’t read a review of anything aimed at me or my peers in almost 15 years. But I do listen to the people.”
Klara and the Sun, which cost a reported $44m (£32.8m) to make, earned just $701,000 (£523,000) in its opening weekend at the North American box office, averaging under $800 (£596) per theatre from 880 venues. It placed 16th, far behind comparable films like Wicker, which opened with $5.7m in North America from 1471 venues at an average of $3,906 per cinema. In contrast, You Can See Everything, a documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, earned $18.7m in its second weekend and reached a cumulative total of $63.8m.
UK Performance and Critical Reception
In the UK, the film opened with £176,000 from 368 venues, averaging £477 per venue. The Guardian's chief critic Peter Bradshaw gave Klara and the Sun a one-star review, calling it “unbearably mannered” and “unspeakably acted”, adding: “[It] is soft-centred sci-fi-lite, simultaneously demanding we laugh at its (unfunny) humour and wipe away a tear at its pass-agg poignancy.” Bradshaw had also negatively reviewed Waititi's 2019 film Jojo Rabbit, describing it as a “terrible film”.
Other critics have been similarly harsh. In the Observer, Wendy Ide called the film “a thin and cloying thing that strips away any profundity in the source material and replaces it with self-conscious quirkiness”, while the LA Times' Tim Grierson said: “[Waititi] lacquers the film with a calculated gooeyness that’s stultifying before it becomes downright exasperating”.
In its second weekend at the North American box office, Klara and the Sun dropped 79% to $145,000 (£108,000) from a similar number of venues.
