Taika Waititi Calls ‘Klara and the Sun’ Critics “Irrelevant, Out Of Touch, Obsolete”

As Taika Waititi‘s latest directorial effort gets its time in the sun, he has some choice words for critics attempting to rain on his parade.

On Saturday, the Oscar winner boasted about Klara and the Sun‘s 78% Rotten Tomatoes audience score (now at 73%), while slamming the “sad lost souls” who gave the movie a negative review, contributing to its 26% critics rating.

“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,” he prefaced on Instagram.

“So this Halloween, let’s spare a thought for those sad lost souls who couldn’t achieve their dreams of becoming artists, and thus became critics. The same people who also hated Jojo Rabbit,” added Waititi. “Irrelevant. Out of touch. Obsolete. In the bin.”

In Deadline’s review, Damon White wrote of the Sony Pictures adaptation, “Taiki Waititi should be a snug-as-a-bug fit for Kazuo Ishiguro’s dystopian — or is it? — 2021 novel, given the director’s affinity for a very particular and peculiar kind of reality-based cringe comedy. But Klara just doesn’t deliver on any of the fronts it promises.”

Meanwhile, Waititi might have flown too close to the sun with the film’s reported $20M budget, opening last weekend to $701K domestic. Following the negative reviews out of BFI this month, Sony cut the film’s wide release to 880 theaters in the US.

Based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 dystopian novel, Klara and the Sun stars Jenna Ortega as the titular android, who is purchased as an “Artificial Friend” for gravely ill teenager Josie (Mia Tharia), whose family is mourning the death of her older sister Sal.