Klara and the Sun Review
Klara and the Sun (2026) Film Review, a movie directed by Taika Waititi, written by Dahvi Waller, Taika Waititi and Kazuo Ishiguro and starring Jenna Ortega, Amy Adams, Mia Tharia, Steve Buscemi, Natasha Lyonne, Aran Murphy, Harry Greenwood, Antonia Prebble, Rachel Forman, Laura Interval, Davida McKenzie, Sura Siu, Molly Curnow and Jesse Griffin.
Klara and the Sun is a high-concept movie that never really gets off the ground because it’s too cute in the beginning to figure out that it’s not heading anywhere exciting, noteworthy or towards anything really resembling what it promise in the first 15 minutes of the picture. It’s certainly not the movie it is in the beginning at the end and that could be OK if it were not advertised as a sunny, feel-good movie.
Director Taika Waititi tries really hard to make viewers care about the solar-powered robot named Klara (Jenna Ortega) that is referred to in the film’s title. Based on a book by Kazuo Ishiguro, it’s now clear that this writer’s work is unfilmable, coming some 16 years after another flop based on his book, Never Let Me Go. These stories are great on paper but come across as meandering and boring on-screen.
At the outset, there is some hope for a quality film. Ortega’s bright and sunny personality encapsulates a robot who is looking to be taken home by a buyer. Ishiguro’s work focuses indirectly on the survival of the fittest mentality of the world, and that concept is integrated into the proceedings at times in this movie that was co-produced by HarperCollins, but it never feels like it maintains the integrity of its literary pedigree, for whatever reason. After seeing this film and reading the Kirkus review of the book, it feels the movie never actually intended to do anything as ambitious as what the book set out to do.
Set after World War III in an internet-less world, Klara and the Sun becomes a story of the artificial companion, Klara, coming into the lives of a mother and daughter, Chrissy (Amy Adams) and Josie (Mia Tharia). Considering the daughter has an undisclosed illness, there will be some heartbreak somewhere along the way as this movie progresses, but the film isn’t moving as much as it is frustrating to watch, and it is like that almost from the very start of the picture.
This film opens with Klara in a store window, reading the actions of an Asian woman with an umbrella who finds comfort with an older gentleman. Two other artificial companions are beside Klara, but the problem with them selling is that a higher version of their prototype exists in a store across the street, and those companions seem more visually appealing for buyers. The manager of Klara’s store (a fun and energetic Natasha Lyonne) tells her companions exactly like it is out in the world, but Klara is an eternal optimist, or so it seems.
The jealous housekeeper in the film, Melania (Rachel House), doesn’t like the idea of Klara, and she’s not the only one. Klara initially seems like a beacon of false hope for the family that takes her in. Chrissy is something of a perfectionist and has challenged her daughter so much, but the themes the movie has up its sleeve often feel like a bait-and-switch based on the contents of the movie that were promised by the trailer. Steve Buscemi appears as a key scientist in the picture, but his character feels like an afterthought in a project that didn’t know what it was going to do other than borrow the title of a popular book and pick and choose what it wanted to lift from that story.
Ortega is playing a part that is a bit strange and it’s hard to tell if the director really wanted her to play it that way. That’s neither here nor there, though. There are so many problems with this movie that it’s impossible to single out the individual scenes that don’t work. Never Let Me Go was dull and depressing and Klara and the Sun is even more depressing, something which you’d never tell from the trailers. Sony cut down the theatrical release of Klara and the Sun to about half as many theaters as it originally intended for opening weekend, most likely based on the poor reviews the film has thus received.
Amy Adams has done far better work in other roles than her somber performance in this film, and it’s a shame to see her talents squandered. Mia Tharia fares somewhat better in the more showy role, but it’s genuinely Ortega who feels out of place in the proceedings, and it was probably intended in the story for her character to feel like an outcast. Ortega sadly becomes the outcast in this movie, however, even though it is, technically, her character’s story. This is the type of movie that is very hard to judge without having read the book. All that can be said is that Klara and the Sun doesn’t work as a movie on its own merits.
Klara and the Sun ultimately steers towards some very heavy and difficult thematic elements that weren’t what was promised in the trailers. This may be a faithful adaptation of the book, but having read just the review of the book, it feels Waititi didn’t really do it justice. People who have read the book will know better. Maybe a director’s cut of the film is in order, just to give the usually confident filmmaker the benefit of the doubt.
Rating: 5/10
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