It's a bit of an understatement to say that the release of Todd Phillips' Joker: Folie à Deux did not go as expected. Its predecessor won multiple Academy Awards and broke box office records, but the sequel saw bad buzz from critics turn into disappointing ticket sales. That being said, it's the kind of movie that feels almost guaranteed to develop a cult following thanks to staunch defenders – and Quentin Tarantino is one who can be counted among their numbers.
The Once Upon A Time In Hollywood writer/director was recently a guest on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast (via World of Reel), and he shared legitimate appreciation for Joker: Folie à Deux. He shared that his expectations were modest going in, and what he ended up appreciating is how much of it "doesn't quite work as a movie." That may seem a touch oxymoronic, but in his own words:
I really, really liked it, really. A lot. Like, tremendously, and I went to see it expecting to be impressed by the filmmaking. 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. 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.
It's certainly an odd take to say that a movie succeeds thanks to its messiness and banality, but that's really the magic of film and film criticism: it's wholly subjective, and what one person sees as a problem might be seen by another as an attribute. Personally speaking, and as I expressed in Joker: Folie à Deux CinemaBlend review, I'm more in the former camp where the Joaquin Phoenix/Lady Gaga feature is concerned.
A deeper aspect of Quentin Tarantino's appreciation for the new 2024 movie is that he recognizes some of his own style and sensibilities as an influence in the work. Namely, he draws a comparison between Joker: Folie à Deux and Natural Born Killers. Tarantino wrote the original screenplay for the latter title, but he has disowned the 1994 film due to changes that were made to the material by writer/director Oliver Stone and credited co-writers David Veloz and Richard Rutowski after he sold his script.
Referencing Mickey and Mallory Knox, the characters played by Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis in Stone's film, Tarantino explained,
As much as the first one was indebted to Taxi Driver, this seems pretty fucking indebted to Natural Born Killers, which I wrote. That’s the Natural Born Killers I would have dreamed of seeing, as the guy who created Mickey and Mallory. I loved what they did with it. I loved the direction he took. I mean, the whole movie was the fever dream of Mickey Knox.
There certainly are multiple parallels to draw between Joker: Folie à Deux and Natural Born Killers. The most obvious is that both stories center on a romance between two mentally ill individuals, but they also have comments to make about media exploitation and feature their characters incarcerated.
On a more big picture level, Quentin Tarantino is also extremely impressed by the work of Todd Phillips – hypothesizing that the filmmaker was channeling the nature of his protagonist in the making of Joker: Folie à Deux. While audiences and the studio were expecting an extension of the blockbuster success of Joker, the sequel ends up executing a big middle finger to the most fervent fans of the 2019 movie, and Tarantino loves it:
Todd Phillips is the Joker. 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? 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 fuck you to all of them. He’s saying fuck you to the movie audience. He’s saying f— you to Hollywood. He’s saying fuck 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.
Following its arrival in theaters earlier this month, Joker: Folie à Deux fell out of the box office domestic Top 10 this past weekend with the arrival of Venom: The Last Dance. It has made just $201 million worldwide theatrically, and is now available to digitally purchase and rent from online outlets.
