Taika Waititi’s ‘Klara and the Sun’ Lands a Rotten Debut and His Lowest Score Yet

Adapting a beloved novel is always a gamble, and adapting a Nobel Prize winner’s quietly devastating sci-fi book is an even bigger one. That is the challenge Taika Waititi took on with ‘Klara and the Sun’, and the first reviews are now in.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel follows Klara, a solar-powered Artificial Friend designed to ease loneliness in children and teenagers. In Sony’s adaptation, written by Waititi and Dahvi Waller, Jenna Ortega plays Klara, a hopeful android who wants nothing more than to find the perfect home. Amy Adams plays the mother who buys her for her ailing daughter Josie, played by Mia Tharia.

The movie has had a long road to theaters. It was announced in 2020 and finished filming in April 2024, and Sony only recently pulled it off the shelf and set an Oct. 23 release. Waititi told Screen Daily earlier this year that he was still in talks with the studio about when and where it would come out.

The film made its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival on Oct. 15, and the reaction has been harsh. It debuted on Rotten Tomatoes with a 20% Tomatometer score from 10 reviews, which makes it the lowest-rated film of Waititi’s career. It also opened at 23 on Metacritic based on its first six reviews.

That score falls below ‘Next Goal Wins’, which sits at 46%, and the director’s ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’, which was considered a disappointment. It also doesn’t help Ortega, whose previous feature, ‘Hurry Up Tomorrow’, holds a 14% score. The Popcornmeter hasn’t populated yet, so general audiences haven’t weighed in.

The film opens in the U.S. next Friday, just a week after its premiere, which gives Sony little time to change the narrative. It runs 1 hour and 56 minutes and is rated PG-13.

Reviewers have focused on the clash between Waititi’s comedic style and Ishiguro’s gentle, melancholy material. The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Times each gave the film one star. The Guardian’s critic described an explosion of postmodern quirkiness, calling the film unbearably mannered. The Times called it hopeless and said it was full of sentimentality and bettered by many earlier robot companion movies.

Deadline was also negative, saying the film doesn’t deliver on what it promises and calling it a sporadically funny meditation on life and premature death. Screen Rant’s Ben Gibbons gave it 5/10 and said it fails to capture the beauty of a carefully constructed dystopian tale, offering a heavy-handed sci-fi comedy with a hollow message.

Little White Lies said the film is more bearable in its comic first half but falls apart when it tries to get serious. The critic noted that Waititi seems to undercut any hint of profundity with silly humor or a comic rug pull, and he argued that few directors would be less suited to the source novel.

The reviews aren’t uniformly bad. At least one critic called it a lovely little fable of hope about what it means to be human, anchored by a delightful performance from Ortega that makes it worth your time. That suggests the movie’s heart may land more with viewers than with critics.

the first trailer of “klara and the sun” starring jenna ortega and amy adams https://t.co/bZWQiuxsaz

— best of jenna ortega (@jennasfiles) June 22, 2026

The project was always a stylistic departure. Waititi has described the adaptation as his most dramatic and challenging work to date, and he said he wanted to use Ortega’s real-life charm and humor rather than her established persona. For Ortega, known for ‘Wednesday’ and horror roles, Klara was a chance to play a bright, optimistic android and break out of her usual mold.

The film also boasts a deep supporting cast. Natasha Lyonne plays a store manager, and Steve Buscemi, Simon Baker and Aran Murphy are also in the film. Ishiguro serves as an executive producer, a sign of how closely the filmmakers tried to protect the novel’s themes of loneliness, love and humanity.

Early reviews can be lethal for adult dramas, and ‘Klara and the Sun’ faces an uphill climb. The film’s trailers have emphasized warmth and friendship over killer-robot horror, which could appeal to families and fans of the book. Whether audiences will care more about that story than about critics’ complaints will be clear in a week.

For Waititi, the stakes are high. After a string of mixed receptions, he needed a rebound, and this was meant to be a bold change of pace. Instead, it has become the lowest-scoring film of his career, at least for now.

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