Critics Say 'Klara and the Sun' Drowns Ishiguro's Sad Robot in Whimsy

Jenna Ortega plays the solar-powered robot friend, and four trade critics agree Taika Waititi's jokes fight the novel's grief and lose.

Before the first scene of Taika Waititi's Klara and the Sun, two critics were already wincing at the music. Variety's Guy Lodge and The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney both picked out Michael Giacchino's score, which starts up under the studio logos, as the first sign of the sugar to come.

That's their whole case against the film in small. We read four trade reviews, from Deadline, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and IndieWire, published from Oct. 15 to Oct. 20 around the film's London Film Festival premiere, and gave them equal weight. All four are pans. All four say Waititi's jokes go to war with the quiet grief in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, and the grief loses.

Nobody here has seen it. It opened in theaters Friday, Oct. 23, and the verdict below belongs to the critics. Their one real argument turns out to be about a different Waititi movie.

Jenna Ortega plays Klara, a solar-powered companion robot who prays to the sun that somebody will buy her from a shop run by a manager played by Natasha Lyonne. A teenager named Josie (Mia Tharia) picks her, and Josie's mother (Amy Adams) takes Klara home to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. There Klara learns that Josie is seriously ill and sets out to save her. Steve Buscemi turns up later as a scientist, and his part is best left unspoiled.

The shop is the only stretch where the critics can't agree on what's in front of them. Deadline's Damon Wise thought the film was at its liveliest there and called Lyonne wonderful. Lodge saw a grim, future-shock take on Annie with Lyonne mugging hard. Rooney wished she were trading snark and swearing instead of drifting through what he likened to a Roald Dahl nightmare.

Once Klara leaves the shop, the critics agree almost completely, and three of them single out the same thing: Josie's genetically enhanced peers. Wise found the scene where she meets them excruciating, with their unlistenable music and unwearable clothes topped off by lisps. Rooney describes snobbish, overdressed party guests ganging up on Josie's unenhanced friend Rick (Aran Murphy) and says it reaches for early Tim Burton and misses.

IndieWire's Ryan Lattanzio, who gave the film a D, found the worst of the clash late in the movie. Two characters racing to rescue Klara from a burning building keep running into an electric fence, getting zapped at least three times, while Giacchino's score plays over the pratfall. The film, Lattanzio wrote, is "pathologically allergic to sincerity."

Through all of it, nobody blames the star. Wise called Ortega a great cheerleader for the spirit the film promises. Lodge found her as charismatic as ever but beaten by a part written on one note. Rooney thought she was at sea, and Lattanzio watched her get flattened into manic-pixie tics. Adams fares worse: Lodge says the script traps her, and Rooney says her mix of haughtiness and sadness never comes together.

Which brings back Jojo Rabbit, the comparison all four reach for. Rooney calls it the Waititi film Klara most resembles, and Wise calls Klara pretty much the same movie moved into the future. For Lodge and Rooney, Jojo was the warning nobody heeded. Lodge calls it crass and mawkish despite its Oscar and a gross of nearly $100 million. Rooney calls it overpraised and says it trivialized the Holocaust.

Wise is the one holdout, and he asks the best question in any of the four. Jojo, he wrote, came from a good place, and the job now is to work out "whether he has drifted far off course or we have." That leaves a real opening for fans of the film that won Waititi the adapted screenplay Oscar. By Wise's own account, this is that movie again. Lodge's bet is that even Jojo's defenders won't be moved in sizable numbers.

The critics' verdict: a sad book made cute. Rooney calls it the worst film yet made from an Ishiguro novel, and his bottom line calls it a robot tale that "ought to be scrapped for parts." Lodge pegs it as "too juvenile for adults, and way too dull for children."

The movie opens with Klara in a shop window, praying that somebody will pick her. Four critics looked in the window and kept walking.

Source: Deadline, retrieved October 23, 2026. Other sources: Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire.