Klara and the Sun (2026) Review: Waititi Fumbles Ishiguro — Jenna Ortega is the one thing critics keep defending in a 22% adaptation that jokes its way past every feeling.

Taika Waititi's adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's 2021 novel, starring Jenna Ortega and Amy Adams, is the lowest-rated film of his career. The problem critics name is not the cast but the tone.

Klara and the Sun opened in US and UK theaters on October 23, 2026, eight days after its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival. Taika Waititi directed from a screenplay he wrote with Dahvi Waller, adapting Kazuo Ishiguro's 2021 novel about Klara (Jenna Ortega), an Artificial Friend bought to keep company with Josie (Mia Tharia), a sick teenager in a future divided by genetic engineering. Amy Adams plays Josie's mother, with Steve Buscemi, Natasha Lyonne and Aran Murphy in support. Sony released it through Columbia Pictures; the runtime is 116 minutes.

The numbers

The reception is about as clear as reception gets. The film holds a 22% Tomatometer from 54 reviews with a 4.4/10 average, and a 30 on Metacritic from 22 critics, which Metacritic classifies as generally unfavorable. Collider and ScreenRant both noted it is the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of Waititi's career as a director. According to Variety's projection cited on Wikipedia, Sony scaled the release back to roughly 850 theaters after the early reviews, with an opening expected around $2 million.

What critics say went wrong

The complaint that recurs across nearly every negative review is tone. Ishiguro's novel is quiet and devastating precisely because Klara narrates without understanding what she is seeing; Waititi's version keeps reaching for laughs. David Jenkins of Little White Lies described a "juvenile habit of undercutting any hint at profundity with a jolt of silly humour." The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney ran his review under the headline "Cloying, Clumsy AI Fable," arguing that the film strains for poignancy while trampling its own emotion with forced humor. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw gave it one star and called it a "sentimental mess."

The case for Jenna Ortega

The performance is the part of the film that even unenthusiastic critics tend to carve out. Collider's roundup quoted praise for a "delightful performance from Jenna Ortega," and her Klara, eager and loyal, is the version of Waititi's comic sensibility that actually suits the material. Amy Adams, playing a mother whose grief drives the story's central secret, has the harder job of carrying the drama the screenplay keeps interrupting. The production also had real ambition behind it: principal photography ran from January 2024 in Wanaka and Auckland, New Zealand, Michael Giacchino scored it, and David Heyman, who produced the Harry Potter films, is among the producers.

Why this adaptation was always risky

Ishiguro novels are notoriously hard to film because so much of their power lives in what a narrator fails to say. The two that worked on screen, The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, both leaned into stillness. Waititi's strengths, as Jojo Rabbit showed, are in deliberately mixing comedy and grief, and on paper that is a defensible approach to a story narrated by a robot. The reviews suggest the mix simply landed on the wrong side here: the jokes make Klara's world feel like a sketch, which removes the dread the novel depends on.

Same weekend, same subject, opposite result

It is hard not to compare Klara and the Sun with Wicker, which opened the same day and is also, at heart, about loving a companion someone built. Wicker is at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, and its reviews praise exactly the sincerity critics say Klara lacks. If artificial-companion romance is what you are after this weekend, the critical consensus points firmly toward the reed husband over the solar-powered android.

Should you see it

Readers who love the novel are the audience most likely to be frustrated, because the reviews are specifically about what the film strips away from it. Jenna Ortega fans may find enough in her performance to justify a matinee, and anyone who has not read the book will at least meet a striking premise. For most viewers, though, this looks like one to catch later on streaming rather than at full theatrical price.