Klara and the Sun: reviews

What the critics say average 3.9 from 22 outlets

• 6.0 Screen DailyDave Calhoun Strong performances and imaginative visuals help to make it an engaging fairytale with a distinctive otherworldly tone – but something is lost by widening the story beyond Klara’s tight perspective. Read
• 6.0 EmpireHelen O'Hara Jenna Ortega anchors a fable of love, pain and sunshine as the sort of AI that might win sceptics over — though she can’t compensate for a wildly inconsistent tone. Read
• 5.0 Screen RantBen Gibbons Despite high hopes at the prospect of Waititi adapting the work of one of my favorite novelists, I'm disappointed to say that Klara and the Sun fails to capture the beauty of a carefully constructed dystopian tale, instead offering up a ham-fisted sci-fi comedy with a hollow message. Read
• 5.0 The A.V. ClubJesse Hassenger Rather than deftly steering between the comic, tragic, uncanny, and beautiful, Klara And The Sun often feels like the result of three or four distinct storylines singing their heart out at once. It’s as if Waititi has become so overwhelmed by different notions of loss (and the enticement of wringing poignant tears from them) that his movies have been trapped in a feedback loop of grief over grief over grief. Read
• 5.0 San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen Johnson Nonetheless, one can’t help but respond to Klara’s essential unjaded sweetness and to how her relationship with both Josie and Chrissy develops. We realize, of course, that it is a human performance, by Ortega, that is moving us. Read
• 5.0 Roger EbertCortlyn Kelly In trying to reach every audience the filmmakers assume will attend, likely a variety of ages and many book fans, it loses focus. Read
• 5.0 The Seattle TimesMoira Macdonald “Klara and the Sun” too often is cloying when it should be moving. Ultimately, the movie is like Klara herself: sweet and earnest and not entirely there. Read
• 4.0 The IndependentClarisse Loughrey The book was about who we fundamentally are, now and tomorrow. The film is about the power of love and friendship. That seems like quite the downgrade. Read
• 4.0 Radio TimesPatrick Cremona 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. Read
• 4.0 The Globe and MailBarry Hertz Sadly, Ortega cannot escape the sweetly shticky mess that she has been handed, with her committed performance as the anxious but spirited Klara getting lost amidst the wreckage. Read
• 4.0 The Irish TimesDonald Clarke Never as funny as it is annoying, never as touching as it is maudlin, here is a film too misconceived to establish even the most eccentric cult following. Read
• 3.9 The WrapWilliam Bibbiani Almost every movie is emotionally manipulative. That’s how movies evoke emotions in the first place, so it’s usually not worth mentioning. We only break out the expression “emotionally manipulative” if the filmmaking is so clumsy that the manipulation doesn’t work. Read
• 3.8 Slant MagazineDavid Robb And yet, here he is at the helm of Klara and the Sun, a faithful adaptation that nevertheless strips away everything insightful and affecting from Ishiguro’s novel. Read
• 3.8 The Boston GlobeOdie Henderson “Klara and the Sun” tries to cover a lot of emotional and plot-related ground, yet stumbles with every step. Read
• 3.3 The PlaylistRodrigo Perez What should have been a graceful meditation on the fragile miracle of being human instead becomes a disappointingly hollow experience, unable to capture the very emotions it so desperately wants to celebrate. Read
• 3.0 Little White LiesDavid Jenkins The result is a garbled mess of half-cocked speculative sci-fi and sentimental platitudes, with Klara’s fuzzy logic dragging us along on a circuitous journey without any satisfying destination. Read
• 3.0 VultureAlison Willmore No one is on the same page as to what the tone of the movie should be. Waititi never settles on one either, most often opting for a glibness that treats key aspects of the plot, including Klara’s rudimentary faith, into something like a joke. Read
• 2.5 The Daily BeastNick Schager With Jenna Ortega spearheading a cast of fine actors doing some of the worst work of their careers, and Waititi ladling on the syrupiness until the proceedings practically choke on it, it’s a wannabe-inspiring fable that proves its maker’s preternatural gift for noxious sentimentality. Read
• 2.5 IndiewireRyan Lattanzio “Klara and the Sun” is pathologically allergic to sincerity, treating major existential questions as treacle — and worse, uncuriously. Read
• 2.5 New York PostJohnny Oleksinski Their combined complacency results in an overworked, overacted and pesky drag that begs — begs! — us to giggle at and cry over odious characters as it ambles to the most obvious message imaginable: that the power of human love cannot be replicated in a lab. Read
• 2.0 The GuardianPeter Bradshaw 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. Read
• 2.0 Los Angeles TimesTim Grierson Such flat, enervating filmmaking makes the whole endeavor a shockingly cynical affair. “Klara and the Sun” keeps insisting we feel things when the storytelling hasn’t earned our tears or despair. Read