Taika Waititi’s adaptation of Klara and the Sun has been greeted with a harsh review that calls it a cloying, clumsy AI fable and the worst screen adaptation of a Kazuo Ishiguro novel. The film, which stars Jenna Ortega as Klara and Amy Adams as Chrissy, is set to release on Friday, Oct. 23.
That date is why the criticism lands now. The film is being positioned as a high-profile take on Ishiguro’s novel, with a running time of 1 hour 56 minutes, a PG-13 rating and a cast that also includes Mia Tharia, Natasha Lyonne, Steve Buscemi, Rachel House, Jesse Griffin, Harry Greenwood and Molly Curnow. Waititi and Dahvi Waller are credited as the screenwriters, and the review centers on how the adaptation handles Klara, a solar-powered AI companion who pleads, “Please, let me be chosen.”
In the film, Klara is bought from The Friend Store, where the Store Manager steers customers toward upgraded B3 robots across the street and dismisses the B1 models as outdated. Chrissy is reluctant to spend money on a superseded model, which gives the story its immediate tension: a childlike machine is asking to matter in a marketplace that has already moved on. That setup should leave room for sadness, but the review says the movie keeps reaching for poignancy while trampling genuine emotion with forced humor.
That is what makes the reaction so blunt. The adaptation is being judged not just as another film based on Ishiguro, but as one that misses the balance that gives his work its power. If the question was whether Waititi could turn a story about AI into something moving, the answer from this review is that he has not. What remains is a release date, a prominent cast and a sharp judgment that leaves little room for doubt about how the film has been received.
