Klara and the Sun review – Taika Waititi’s manic pixie dream robot sci-fi is a sentimental mess
The director of Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Jojo Rabbit turns Kazuo Ishiguro’s AI fable into a twee, tiresome tale of love and grief Taika Waititi detonates an explosion of postmodern quirkiness and ironic dorkiness in this unbearably mannered, unspeakably acted film. It’s a slice of sentimental whimsy-futurism and non-satire, adapted by Waititi from the Kazuo Ishiguro novel, which winds up saying nothing…
Key points
- Taika Waititi directs an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Klara and the Sun, which the review calls a sentimental mess.
- The film is set in a post-third-world-war world where families buy artificial friend robots for their children.
- Jenna Ortega plays Klara, a solar-powered robot who worships the sun, while Amy Adams plays Josie's mother.
Taika Waititi has adapted Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Klara and the Sun into a film that a Guardian review describes as an unbearably mannered and unspeakably acted sentimental mess. The review says the director fills the movie with postmodern quirkiness and ironic dorkiness, resulting in soft-centred sci-fi-lite that says nothing substantial or funny about artificial intelligence, love or grief.
The review compares the film unfavourably to Waititi's earlier comedies Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Thor: Ragnarok, saying it is closer to his misjudged and self-admiring Jojo Rabbit.
The film's setting and plot
In the film's world, families buy artificial friend robots, known as AFs, for their children. The review notes that an AF salesperson, played by Natasha Lyonne, says the recent third world war has wiped out the internet, though the post-war world otherwise looks in good shape. The AF humanoids have purple blood called PEC-9, which one character says is highly flammable.
a sentimental and laborious mess
— The Guardian
Klara and her new family
Klara, played by Jenna Ortega, is an earlier, rudimentary AF model that is solar-powered and worships the sun as a god. She is bought by Josie, a lonely 14-year-old genius-prodigy facing an unspecified illness and an expensive lifting procedure. Josie's mother is played by Amy Adams and the grumpy housekeeper Melania is played by Rachel House. Klara goes to live with the family in a dreamlike Midwest farming landscape, where she becomes convinced the sun lives in a nearby barn.
