‘Klara and the Sun’ review: Taika Waititi's new sci-fi film had so much potential, but not even Jenna Ortega can save it

I’ve found that a little bit of Taika Waititi’s whimsy goes a long way, and the more twee his movies get, the more annoying they become. That contrast is particularly evident in the two “Thor” movies he directed for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which received very different responses despite having essentially the same tone and style. The goofiness of “Thor: Ragnarok” felt refreshing, while the same goofiness turned irritating when it was amped up even further in “Thor: Love and Thunder.”

Waititi’s new adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel “Klara and the Sun” isn’t nearly as silly as his “Thor” movies, but it’s nonetheless incredibly cloying, with a cutesy tone that’s only modulated by an even more insipid maudlin tendency.

Ishiguro is known for writing lyrical, haunting stories about the human condition, and the sci-fi themes of “Klara and the Sun” are similar to the ideas in Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go,” which was adapted into a heartbreaking movie by Mark Romanek in 2010. Waititi isn’t equipped to handle those weighty concerns, though, and he turns the story into a simplistic, mawkish fable.

‘Klara and the Sun’ does very little with its basic sci-fi premise

The world-building in the screenplay by Waititi and Dahvi Waller is sketchy at best, depicting a generic dystopian future with seemingly no interest in exploring its larger ramifications. There are brief references to a third World War and the end of the internet, but life seems mostly stable in the movie’s limited settings. While the internet may no longer exist, that doesn’t mean that technology has regressed, and society is now full of autonomous android helpers.

Klara (Jenna Ortega) is one of those androids, an Artificial Friend (or AF) designed as a companion for teenagers. The AFs are a confusing combination of technological sophistication and intellectual naïveté, and Klara and her fellow AFs have spent their entire lives in a store, with a skewed understanding of how the world works. Klara later explains that AFs are meant to be blank slates so that their owners can shape their personalities, but Klara’s oddball personality seems fully formed from the beginning, while her wide-eyed gullibility makes her essentially useless as a companion. She’s more like an excitable toddler than a teenage peer.

That doesn’t bother Josie (Mia Tharia), though, and she insists to her mother, Chrissie (Amy Adams), that she wants Klara as her AF, even though there are newer, more advanced models available. Josie and Chrissie live with their housekeeper Melania (Rachel House) in a large, isolated home surrounded by farmland, and Josie is clearly lonely. Her sister Sal died when she was young, and her only friend is her neighbor Rick (Aran Murphy). She’s undergone a procedure known as “lifting,” another sci-fi concept that’s as vaguely defined as AFs, which has genetically altered her to make her essentially a genius.

The characters in ‘Klara and the Sun’ are empty collections of quirks

The title refers to Klara’s belief that the sun is a sentient deity that listens to her prayers and grants her requests, an idea that stops being endearing remarkably quickly. Maybe her primitive understanding of the world seems profound in a novel written from her perspective, but the movie just makes her seem like an idiot, especially as she fails to grasp Josie’s explanations for how things really work.

Ortega goes overboard with her exaggerated movements and facial expressions to capture how disoriented and overwhelmed Klara is to experience life beyond the store, but it always rings false, like she’s engaging in an acting-school exercise.

Adams plays Chrissie as cold and aloof until she opens up about her grief, at which point “Klara and the Sun” starts its transformation from a chipper comedy into a sappy tearjerker. Not only did Chrissie lose one child, but she’s now potentially about to lose another, as hinted via all the obvious hallmarks of Movie Illness. Klara’s determination to save Josie makes her like a loyal dog in a treacly TV movie, with about the same level of comprehension of what’s happening.

Although Josie is the one dealing with health challenges, she fades into the background of the story as it progresses, and Tharia’s initially appealing snark becomes muted. The movie’s low point is an interminable, painfully unfunny scene in which a group of stereotypically snobby “lifted” kids get together at Josie’s house and treat her, Klara and Rick with exaggerated contempt.

If there’s any commentary in the story on class inequality or the value of human connection, Waititi completely loses it in strained comedy and cheap sentiment.

Verdict: ‘Klara and the Sun’ is a grating sci-fi misfire

Waititi mixed offbeat comedy with heartwarming bonding much more effectively in his 2016 film “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” (also featuring Rachel House), but he consistently misses the mark in “Klara and the Sun,” which gets more unconvincing as it goes along.

Androids who yearn to be human are a sci-fi staple, and there are plenty of well-crafted stories about the bonds between people and robots. Waititi aims for the deep emotions of “After Yang” with the madcap comedy of “Ron’s Gone Wrong,” and he fails to live up to those superior recent movies on both fronts.

Even Ortega’s acting talents can’t save “Klara and the Sun,” which requires her to do way too much mugging to make up for the screenplay’s comedic and emotional shortcomings. The whimsy runs its course within the first scene, and all that’s left is tiresome shtick and desperate tugging on the audience’s heartstrings.

“Klara and the Sun” opens Oct. 23 in theaters