Klara and the Sun review: A superficial and sentimental movie that’s eager to please
Taika Waititi’s latest film is adapted from a novel by a renowned author, but the depth of the book didn’t carry over to the screen.
Not always, but a lot of the time, when there’s a long break between when a film has finished shooting and when it’s released, it hints that something isn’t quite right.
Klara and the Sun wrapped filming in early 2024, and with its long languish in post-production, and an initial 2025 release pushed to until now, you start to wonder why there’s no rush to share this movie with the world.
Maybe everyone knew it just wasn’t that good. Nor is it an out-and-out disaster.
Sign up to The Nightly's newsletters.
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.
By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.The Taika Waititi-directed film has some interesting ideas and elements, but it doesn’t cohere into something befitting its source material, a 2021 novel by the acclaimed British writer Kazuo Ishiguro.
The delay to release also didn’t help the film because its main character, the titular Klara, is an AI robot and deals with how she intersects with concepts of humanity. Watching it in 2026, contextualised within our not-yet peaked anxieties about an AI-dominant future, it already feels antiquated and removed.
Klara (Jenna Ortega) is an Artificial Friend, an AF, who was designed to be a social companion to teenagers who have all become largely isolated from their peers. An older model, Klara prays to the sun to grant her wish to be chosen and taken home.
One day, a girl named Josie (Mia Tharia) convinces her mother Chrissie (Amy Adams) to buy Klara, who stood out for being a little strange.
At Josie’s home, the curious Klara adjusts to her new surroundings in a lavishly decorated house far from the city, surrounded by wheat fields. She is immediately enamoured with Josie, although Chrissie and housekeeper Melania (Rachel House) are more sceptical.
Klara brims with optimism, and Ortega’s saucer-sized eyes sparkle with pep as she waxes lyrical about how the sun gives her life – she is solar-powered, so, technically true – and believes in it as some sort of omniscient deity.
That in itself is an interesting element, but the film doesn’t explore any deeper this idea of an artificial being with faith in something that can’t really be computed.
Just as it grazes over a lot of other strands that are more compelling than the story that’s actually unfolding including the fact in this future world, rich children has access to a process called “lifting” which unlocks the dormant parts of our brains to become essentially mega geniuses.
That effectively creates a super elite class where anyone without the resources for the procedure, even if they’re naturally intelligent, such as Josie’s friend and neighbouring kid Rick (Aran Murphy), become the ruled.
Like Klara herself, the movie is eager to please. It’s bright and sentimental and seemingly with only a superficial understanding of human emotions.
It also has a rushed ending that muddles more than clarifies, rendering both plot beats and emotional arcs obscure. The film feels more out of reach as it journeys on, as if there is a deeper truth it was scared of, so opts instead for easy-to-reach platitudes.
Klara and the Sun is unlikely to convince you to take an AF home with you.
Rating: 2.5/5
Klara and the Sun is in cinemas
