Klara and the Sun review: Jenna Ortega stars in a bizarrely misjudged adaptation of a terrific novel

When it comes to book-to-movie adaptations, sometimes you see a combination of source material and filmmaker and instinctively sense a severe tonal mismatch.

For many of those who have read Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro’s thoughtful and spellbinding dystopian 2021 novel Klara and the Sun, the choice of Taika Waititi to helm the silver screen version of the story instantly jumped out as one such example.

The hugely successful New Zealand filmmaker – an Oscar-winner for 2019’s Jojo Rabbit and also the director of two smash hit Thor movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – is best known for a quirky, wacky sense of humour that seems entirely at odds with the tone of Ishiguro’s more quietly introspective book.

And though there are plenty of examples in cinema history of an unusual marriage of creatives leading to an interesting friction that produces something fresh and unique, there are also myriad cases where the result is something jarring and messy that completely misses the mark. Unfortunately, Klara and the Sun fits squarely into the latter category.

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As in the novel, our central figure is the titular Klara (Jenna Ortega) – an outdated model of “Artificial Friend” (or AF), who we find desperately hoping to be purchased from the rundown shop operated by Natasha Lyonne’s store manager. Klara greatly enjoys watching the world go by, especially on the days when she is selected for the prime placement in the store’s window display, and has struck up a special affinity for the sun, which she worships with more or less religious fervour.

One day, Klara’s greatest wish comes true. A girl named Josie (Mia Tharia) spies her in the window and immediately insists that this is the AF for her, despite her mother Chrissy’s (Amy Adams) protestations that she’d be better off with a more advanced model. And so Klara is boxed up and sent to serve as Josie’s closest companion, which soon leads to her making a number of increasingly alarming discoveries.

In the novel, which is narrated entirely from Klara’s perspective, it is the title character’s sometimes naive but often insightful observations about the world and the people who occupy it that more or less drive the whole piece – giving readers an outsider’s view of humanity in all its complexity and absurdity. There are also musings on technology, and where our evolving relationship with it might lead in a future that doesn't feel so far away.

Waititi attempts to recreate this observational approach in part, but an awful lot of nuance and insight is lost in his translation, while Ortega’s overly deliberate performance fails to capture the gentle nature of the character as she is on the page.

Among the film’s most obvious flaws is Waititi’s insistence on transplanting his familiar comic style – which worked such a treat in early works like What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople – to a story where it simply doesn’t fit. This would be more forgivable if the jokes were reliably funny, but there are vanishingly few laughs to be had here and one or two moments of outright cringe, with a disastrous scene involving Josie's classmates and a tacked-on subplot concerning a robotic scarecrow feeling especially misjudged.

There are other issues, too. Many of the novel’s key plot points, especially in the latter half, are truncated or rushed, with some developments and characters introduced but barely explained or explored at all. This leads to a sense of incompleteness that prevents the film from reaching anywhere near the profound emotional and intellectual beats it needs to hit in order to be successful, a problem that can’t be masked by Waititi’s frequent attempts to prise tears from the audience by leaning into his most egregiously schmaltzy impulses (the score by Michael Giacchino is asked to do a lot of heavy lifting.)

And so although not without a few saving graces – there is some charming design and spirited performances from relative newcomers Tharia and Aran Murphy – it all adds up to a bizarrely executed adaptation that gets nowhere near the brilliance or magic of its source material. Perhaps on this occasion you should stick to the book.

Klara and the Sun is released in UK cinemas on Friday 23 October.

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Authors

Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.