‘Klara and the Sun’ Review: Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams Should Have Insisted on a Factory Reset for Taika Waititi’s Cloying, Clumsy AI Fable

Even before the wretched mess of Klara and the Sun begins, the opening strains of Michael Giacchino’s score playing over the production logos have us bracing for an overload of saccharine whimsy. But what follows is even worse, a film so at odds with itself that it keeps straining for poignancy while trampling on any hint of genuine emotion with forced humor that rarely prompts even a smile. Led by a misused Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams, Taika Waititi’s clanging dud has the distinction of being indisputably the worst screen adaptation of a novel by Nobel Prize laureate Kazuo Ishiguro.

Whether he’s working in the vein of literary historical fiction, like An Artist of the Floating World or The Remains of the Day, or speculative dystopian sci-fi like Never Let Me Go, Ishiguro’s elegant prose folds together predominantly first-person narration with subtlety and obfuscation to explore such foundational themes as memory and trauma. Waititi and co-screenwriter Dahvi Waller seem impervious to that refined sensibility, instead preferring to slather on the quirks, to stunningly charmless effect.

Ortega plays the eponymous Klara, a solar-powered AI companion who gives praise to the sun for each new day of life and energy, while reiterating her undying wish: “Please, let me be chosen.” By chosen, she means purchased from The Friend Store to be taken home by someone for whom Klara can fulfill her purpose. But the boss addressed only as Store Manager (Natasha Lyonne) holds out dwindling hope of her outdated B1 models being snapped up, especially once competition opens directly across the street, with the upgraded B3 robots parading in the window like Calvin Klein underwear models.

But while goofing around in the Friend Store window, Klara catches the eye of teenage shopper Josie (Mia Tharia). Despite the objections of her mother Chrissy (Adams), who is reluctant to spend money on a superseded model, Josie insists that radiantly optimistic Klara is the Artificial Friend she wants. Store Manager promptly ships off the robot in a coffin-sized box, assuring Chrissy that the purchase is fully refundable during the trial period.

Ortega works hard to milk physical comedy out of lame tech humor, as Klara struggles to navigate the unfamiliar spaces — especially the stairs — of her new home on a rolling hillside surrounded by wheatfields, her vision constantly scrambling and recalibrating as she adjusts to first-time experiences like being outdoors. When she watches the sun setting directly behind a neighboring farm’s barn on the horizon, Klara becomes convinced that’s where the glowing orb lives.

While Chrissy is annoyed by the AI resident and housekeeper Melania (Rachel House) openly hostile, convinced the droid is angling to replace her, Klara remains full of pluck and determination, learning all that she can about her new friend Josie. Turns out Josie is a multidisciplinary genius since going through a Genetic Elevation Process known as Lifting. Having lost one daughter, Chrissy sought perfection in her remaining child, ignoring the risks of the modification procedure that have resulted in sickly Josie slowly succumbing to a chronic illness.

Enlisting help from Josie’s friend Rick (Aran Murphy), a self-taught robotics whiz, and to a lesser extent from an AI Scarecrow (Jesse Griffin), who seems to exist solely to hammer the half-baked Wizard of Oz connection, Klara sets about harnessing the sun’s powers to heal Josie. But Chrissy has other contingency plans for life after Josie, involving eccentric scientist Henry Capaldi (Steve Buscemi), who specializes in using technology to deal with family loss.

Not only does Waititi’s film have nothing to say about the evolving relationship between humans and AI, it fails even in the more pedestrian territory of friendship, love, grief and that tired old thematic staple of reminding us to cherish every moment while we can. The movie is fatally twee, a quality entirely antithetical to Ishiguro’s exquisite writing — that applies both to the Japanese British author’s fiction and his screenplays, like 2022’s English-language Kurosawa remake, Living.

In his early New Zealander films Boy, Hunt for the Wilderpeople (we miss you, Sam Neill) and What We Do in the Shadows, Waititi showed a talent for infusing breezy, offbeat comedy with heart. Even his first Marvel foray, Thor: Ragnarok, had a disarming cheerfulness to its bombast, with a double dose of campy fun from Cate Blanchett and Tom Hiddleston. But the director’s crowd-pleasing instincts had devolved into cutesy self-congratulation by the time his wildly overpraised, Holocaust-trivializing satire Jojo Rabbit came along. In its uncertain tonality and zany humor that falls flat, that’s the Waititi film that Klara and the Sun most resembles.

None of the actors is well-served by the script, their characterizations either under-developed or inconsistent. Ortega, who brings such a spirited edge to darker material like Wednesday or Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, is at sea here trying to find some kind of feeling behind Klara’s wide-eyed wonder, her beaming smile and confusion about the strange ways of the human world. And Adams’ blend of haughtiness and melancholy never gels.

It must be said, regrettably, that Adams could not have been less flatteringly photographed or outfitted. Costume designer Mayes Rubeo has dressed her like an ostentatious kook in boxy coats and ugly prints, while Lyonne — who really should be dispensing snark and swearing like a trucker, not sauntering around in some kind of Roald Dahl nightmare — is dressed like a ‘70s budget airline flight attendant. It’s hard to make the breathtaking locations of New Zealand’s South Island look uninteresting, but DP Michael Berlucchi gives everything a bland sheen devoid of personality or a sense of place.

Not to pick on Tharia and Murphy, who do what they can with their roles, but Josie and Rick are the dreariest screen teens in recent memory. They are a breath of fresh air, however, compared to the elaborately couture-clad, insufferably conceited guests at Josie’s birthday party, flaunting their “Lifted” cleverness while ganging up on unlifted Rick. That party scene is one of many points where you get the feeling Waititi is going for the kind of oddball expressionism that distinguished early Tim Burton films. Needless to say, it misses that mark and just about any other that might be considered entertaining.