‘Klara and the Sun’ review: Jenna Ortega plays an annoying robot in sci-fi slop

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Oh, look — another weird role for Jenna Ortega. Goodie.

Or, rather, good grief.

Whether she’s goth-ing it up in “Wednesday,” “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice” or the upcoming execrable art-world satire “The Gallerist,” the Gen Z actress is firmly in the business of bizarre. She is so odd so often, really, that her projects have slid into boring routine and predictability. Not to mention fakeness.

That Ortega plays a quirky AI robot in Taika Waititi’s twee, cotton-candy, sci-fi groaner “Klara and the Sun” comes as no surprise at all. It’s what she always does.

Similarly, what has become apparent from this director’s lacking projects since the excellent “Jojo Rabbit” and “Thor: Ragnarok” is that forcing his dry and wacky sense of humor upon stories that don’t ask for it is what he always does.

Their combined complacency results in an overworked, overacted and pesky drag that begs — begs! — us to giggle at and cry over odious characters as it ambles to the most obvious message imaginable: That the power of human love cannot be replicated in a lab.

I dunno. I bet some determined scientists could get a lot closer than this dud does.     

Ortega’s Klara is, naturally, not your average bot. Although, in the grand scheme of android tales, she’s pretty meh. On sale at a cheap urban shop run by a sad manager (Natasha Lyonne), Klara prefers to stand on one leg and rebelliously break all the rules. “Don’t be weird!,” the others implore her.

Klara doesn’t listen — especially when she makes her irksome daily paeans to the sky.

“Hello, Sun. Thank you for your healing ways and your infinite goodness,” she says in the film’s first few seconds. Our response to such thick sap is to recoil much in the same way as when a blind date begins with, “Let me tell you about Bitcoin.” 

Klara — an outdated model of “artificial friends” called a B1 — just can’t get purchased. That is, until a teen girl named Josie (Maria Tharia) spots her in the store window and demands her mom Chrissie (Amy Adams) buy Klara for her.

The toy is troublesome and klutzy, but life-changing. Think “AI Bud.” 

Author Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel the movie is based on has many fans, so I’ll assume that the book capably builds these characters into people we don’t dearly wish would go away and never come back.

Waititi does not. He simultaneously makes everybody goofy and desperately tries to earn our sympathy by turning Josie, Chrissie and Klara into tedious talking tragedies. Nothing he does works.

Klara is an unwanted whimpering shelter dog with a heart of gold (or some alloy). She’s a Little Orphan Annie type only much more annoying, if you can believe it.

And cold and mean Chrissie’s other daughter — Josie’s sister — died years earlier and her husband left the family as a result. So that’s why she’s so bitter and off-putting!

But the hard-knock lives don’t end there.

At the prodding of her domineering mom, Josie has just had a special procedure for rich kids called being “lifted” that alters a person’s DNA to make them a genius. She now writes screenplays, paints beautifully and is a concert pianist. The side effect is she’s a joyless shell. 

In short: Here are the reasons why these people are so gosh darn unpleasant.

Adams is especially hard to stomach as interior-designer Chrissie, who openly hates Klara for being obsolete, I guess. “You’re not the droid we’re looking for, honey!,” she shouts at the robot in a cringey “Star Wars” reference. 

This would be a great screenplay if it was mulch. Another holy-moly line of Chrissie’s: “I just never thought God would screw me over twice!”

In many of Adams’ recent roles, the actress appears like her eyes are about to pop out of her head.  It’s as if she’s tensing up in order to feel all the acting she’s doing — a common habit of much less experienced performers. I found it stressful to watch her. 

Equally hostile toward Klara is housekeeper Melania (New Zealand actress Rachel House), who’s afraid of being replaced by technology. What’s confusing in this futuristic setting is that she hasn’t been already. House acts as the comic relief in a film that actually needs dramatic relief. 

And I can’t really blame Tharia for what she’s been asked to do as a teenage downer. Josie is NyQuil-drowsy, and her youthful angst manifests as know-it-all-ism. When we’re asked to feel for her in the end, we don’t.

I can’t stand the ugly way Waititi and his collaborators have visualized their world. Characters dress and behave like a mashup of Catherine O’Hara in “Beetlejuice” and the Transylvanians about to do the “Time Warp” in “Rocky Horror.” The aesthetic is neither explained, nor artistically exciting or confident enough to not require an explanation.

Josie’s house is miles away from the smoke-filled “Blade Runner”-ish city surrounded by wheat fields. But it’s too bright and too yellow. Practically jaundiced. Less nature, more Lemonheads. 

Much like Klara’s journey — a blinding and sickly sweet adventure that makes you pucker instead of smile.