published October 30, 2026
Jenna Ortega finds a terrific showcase for her talents – both dramatic and comedic – as an artificial human seeking real companionship.
Klara and the Sun deserves a large audience.
Unfortunately, in today’s moviegoing climate, it’s likely going to take a while for that audience to find it – and love it.
Even as the production company logos roll (a half-dozen or more of them) and Michael Giacchino’s score kicks in, Klara and the Sun starts to throw a vibe. It’s a vibe of Edward Scissorhands. Once that vibe is picked up, it’s hard to shake. As Klara and the Sun plays out, it seems more and more like a great Tim Burton movie that Tim Burton had nothing to do with.
Edward Scissorhands – and the winning trio of Burton, Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder – received a lukewarm reception at first, back in 1990. It’s global box office of $86 million ($221 million adjusted for inflation in 2026 dollars) made it a modest success. But it’s since become widely regarded as a beloved modern classic. There’s no doubt Klara and the Sun will also find a long life of its own beyond the initial box office.
The director is Taika Waititi, who won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (Jojo Rabbit) and who’s found major success as a director of Marvel and Star Wars properties, along with the feature movie What We Do in the Shadows, which lived on as a TV series. But some of his movies – away from the hype of those franchises – allow Taika to be Taika in ways that go underappreciated, particularly with his overlooked Next Goal Wins.
Klara is based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, the Nobel prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, both of which were also adapted into movies. Ishiguro has said he sees the movie version of Klara and the Sun as an “evolution” of the book rather than a direct adaptation and he seems pleased with the result.
It’s a post-apocalyptic civilization. World War III brought down the internet. It’s a cold, cruel world, one in which artificial humans – advanced, lifelike robots – are sold for companionship. The titular Klara is a B1 ’bot, an older model that lacks certain features found in the new and extremely popular B3 models. Bluetooth and a companion protection mode top the list, but it doesn’t hurt those “new kids” spend their time in store windows dressed in designer underwear while looking so incredibly stylish and sophisticated. Suitably, they’re called Fancy Friends.
The intermediate models – the B2 series – were problematic. They started killing humans. (Cue the Blade Runner theme.) They’re not sold anymore.
As a B1 – or Artificial Friend (a rather cold brand name) – Klara was designed to be a friend during those long, lonely, dorky years of teenage life. Then, if all goes well, she’ll have the luxury of spending her remaining, post-service days in a yard with other retired ’bots. If not, she’ll get melted down and get reborn as a new model. Oddly enough, given that drab “Artificial Friend” brand, the B1s were accused of being too human. As the store manager (Natasha Lyonne) explains without a shred of irony, the B1s were never discontinued. They just stopped making them. (But keep that box in the garage in case you need to return your too-real friend.)
After a day-in, day-out routine of praying to the sun for prime front alcove display space and getting all dressed up in all kinds of action-oriented outfits, only to spend evenings in a drab grab “work” outfit, Klara continues to hold out hope against all hope. She might have a loose chip somewhere, given some of one-of-a-kind quirks, such as a single-legged stance at odd times. But she keeps the faith that she’ll get her real human companion.
Mercifully, a girl spots her in the window and they make a connection. The girl is Josie (Mia Tharia); she’s a multi-talented girl, the kind who wrote a complete screenplay in a day (a day!) and rammed through a massive stack of books in a week. But she’s sick.
Josie’s mother, Chrissy (Amy Adams), is extremely protective of her daughter, which is totally reasonable, given Josie’s younger sister died of (allegedly) natural causes.
Klara and the Sun pokes at a lot of modern conventions and sensibilities around new technology, scientific advancements and raising children. The friendship that forms between Klara and Josie is effective, but it’s merely the surface-level story, the sugar coating. Klara runs deep with ideas, some of which will no doubt rub some people the wrong way.
To wit, there’s a strange genetic operation called “the lifting” that enhances a child’s intellectual abilities and creative talents, at least in theory. This process creates yet another stratification among students who already have enough challenges fitting in and finding friends. And, following the operation and various academic studies, Josie is subjected to six exams and an interaction meeting that reveals how bonkers her fellow “lifteds” truly are. The lifted kids seem less human than their artificial friends. They’re creepy, and extremely abusive to their humanoid companions. They use big, fancy words and speak of things like “existential violence” without having lived enough to know what any of it means.
The overwhelming thought is maybe it’s better to let kids be kids than to meddle and surgically manipulate them into something they’re not. The operations are dangerous and Josie was in some way injured during her process. She suffers from severe headaches among other ailments. Her life is in danger. As in the clock is ticking.
But having those ideas floating around in a quirky, wonderfully, colorfully rendered world makes Klara and the Sun all the more a surprisingly solid package that needs to be assessed in full.
In a pure Burtonesque touch, Josie lives in a large house out in the country, at the far end of a cul-de-sac that is surrounded by empty fields. There are no other houses. None to the left. None to the right.
But there is one way up on a hill, far off in the distance. Klara thinks it’s home to the sun.
There’s also a weird maid, Melania (Rachel House) who makes a simple hedger seem oh so menacing.
Given the “loose chip” status of Klara and Josie’s precarious health, one of the underlying themes of Klara and the Sun comes as a simple message: It’s okay to be broken.
Funnily enough, the goal is to keep it real. Perfection is unattainable, so don’t make it a life’s goal. Instead, assess what it is you want out of life and determine how you want to best spend your limited time.
It’s all so sound.
And it’s all in a world that has lost sight of those simple concepts and ideals. At one point, a comment is made about how the older generations saw and valued the irreplaceable, unique aspects of people. Now, in this devastated, cold world, there’s nothing that can’t be recreated thanks to cold, unfeeling and indiscriminate technology.
With such possibilities, the cost to the most basic of human elements is nothing has any real value. With the rise of AI and so many notions of getting everything for free, that seemingly distant, far-off dystopian world seems too close to the present for comfort.