Taika Waititi's long-delayed screen adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Klara and the Sun had its UK premiere at the London Film Festival this week, and the reviews arriving ahead of next week's wide release have been unsparing. In a review published Thursday, the Guardian's chief film critic Peter Bradshaw dismissed the film as a "sentimental mess" that fails to say anything substantial about artificial intelligence, love or grief.
The story is set in a near-future in which a third world war has knocked out the internet, and families can buy humanoid "artificial friend", or AF, robots to keep their children company. Klara, played by Jenna Ortega, is one such AF, purchased for Josie (Mia Tharia), a lonely 14-year-old who has been surgically "lifted" into a higher intelligence tier but is suffering from an unspecified illness. Amy Adams plays Josie's anxious mother, and Natasha Lyonne appears as the AF saleswoman who explains, among other things, that the robots run on a purple, blood-like substance called PEC-9 that is "highly flammable."
Klara is an older, solar-powered AF model rather than one of the newer, Bluetooth-charged versions, and she develops a near-religious devotion to the sun, which she comes to believe lives inside a barn near the family's remote farmhouse. The film follows her efforts to protect Josie as the girl's health worsens, building to what Bradshaw called an unsatisfying, contrived twist ending. The supporting cast includes Rachel House as the family's gruff housekeeper, in what Bradshaw singled out as the film's closest brush with genuine comedy.
Klara and the Sun was one of the higher-profile premieres at this year's London Film Festival, screening in the main slate before the start of its commercial run. Festival premieres often set the tone for a film's reception in the weeks before general release, and an early, high-profile notice as dismissive as Bradshaw's is likely to shape expectations heading into next week's cinemas.
A scathing notice
Bradshaw did not hold back. "Taika Waititi detonates an explosion of postmodern quirkiness and ironic dorkiness in this unbearably mannered, unspeakably acted film," he wrote, arguing the film "winds up saying nothing substantial or meaningful" about its ostensible subjects.
Klara and the Sun is soft-centred sci-fi-lite, simultaneously demanding we laugh at its (unfunny) humour and wipe away a tear at its pass-agg poignancy.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
The review placed the new film alongside Waititi's most divisive work rather than his most acclaimed. "With earlier films like Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Thor: Ragnarok, Waititi showed he can do comedy," Bradshaw wrote. "But this, sadly, is closer to his notorious fey-Hitler fantasy Jojo Rabbit – misjudged and self-admiring."
From page to screen
Ishiguro's 2021 novel, published four years after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, was widely praised on its release for its restrained, first-person narration from Klara's point of view and its oblique approach to questions of consciousness and class. Waititi's adaptation, co-written with Dahvi Waller, was first announced in 2020 and finished shooting in April 2024, with little news emerging in the long gap before its festival bow.
Bradshaw was not alone in finding the tonal balancing act unconvincing, writing that the film demands laughs from humour that isn't funny and tears from poignancy that doesn't land. He suggested that recent films tackling similar ground, including Kogonada's After Yang, handled the theme of artificial companionship more persuasively.
The film is set for a wider theatrical rollout through distributor Sony Pictures, opening in Australia on 22 October and in the UK and US on 23 October, when audiences beyond the festival circuit will get their first look at Ortega's performance as the lovably naive robot at the story's centre.
