Is Klara and the Sun Worth Watching? Critics Split on Waititi’s Ishiguro Film

Is Klara and the Sun worth watching? That depends, unusually, on which critics you trust — few films this autumn have split reviewers this cleanly. Taika Waititi’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel premiered at the BFI London Film Festival on 15 October 2026 and opens in UK and US cinemas today, 23 October, through Sony Pictures. It runs 116 minutes and is rated PG-13, according to Planet of Films. Jenna Ortega plays Klara, a solar-powered Artificial Friend — an older robot model in a shop window, praying to the sun she draws power from — chosen by Josie (Mia Tharia), a sick teenager. Amy Adams plays Josie’s mother, Chrissie, with Natasha Lyonne, Steve Buscemi, Aran Murphy and Rachel House in support.

Information verified through 23 October 2026.

The one-star pile-on: what the harshest Klara and the Sun film review notices agree on

Start with the rough end, because it is loud. Planet of Films’ round-up of the early reviews recorded a Rotten Tomatoes score of 29% from 14 reviews at the time of writing, and the pattern inside those notices is consistent: Waititi’s comic instincts fight Ishiguro’s quiet sadness, and sadness loses.

Damon Wise, reviewing for Deadline via that round-up, called the film a “curiously flat comedy-drama” that is only “sporadically funny” and loses its appeal once Klara leaves the shop. Guy Lodge, in Variety, went further — a “hopeless mismatch of filmmaker and source material,” “perky and inert,” like “a warmly worded Hallmark card from an artificial friend.” Ryan Lattanzio, in IndieWire, gave it a D and called it “confoundingly awful, relentlessly twee,” arguing that gags — an electric-fence rescue, a running one-legged stance — clash with the score and cut the emotional scenes off at the knees.

The British papers were blunter still. Critical Popcorn noted that one-star reviews arrived from some of the biggest outlets, including The Guardian and The Times. David Jenkins, in Little White Lies, awarded one star and said rich subject matter was squandered, a verdict Planet of Films quotes directly. David Robb, in Slant Magazine, gave it 1.5 out of 4, describing a faithful adaptation that “strips away everything insightful and affecting” from the novel.

Klara and the Sun film vs book: where the adaptation lightens Ishiguro

The sharpest single line in the whole pile belongs to Clarisse Loughrey, in The Independent, who gave the film two stars. Planet of Films quotes her: “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.”

That charge runs through the negative notices. Lodge, in Variety, argued the screenplay by Waititi and Dahvi Waller wanders into questions about artificial life that Ex Machina, Her and Robot Dreams handled with more nuance. But Why Tho’s review — warmer overall, at 6.5 out of 10 — made a plainer version of the same point: threads about faulty people, faulty machines and disposability are set up, then left unresolved. Klara’s tension with the housekeeper never settles. Josie and her mother never quite talk. The ending lands on zingers from Lyonne’s store manager, and “cheapens the journey.”

Book readers, take that seriously. The complaints are not about plot changes. They are about weight lifted off material that needs it.

Jenna Ortega Klara and the Sun performance: the consensus bright spot

Here is the odd thing. Reviewers who disliked almost everything else kept making an exception for the lead.

Matt Rodgers, in Flickering Myth, gave the film three stars and called Ortega “the beaming light of the film” — an “inquisitive living-doll performance” whose slapstick stair-climb turns, by the final reel, into finger-twitching that he found “subtly heart-breaking.” He praised Adams, too, as a vessel of grief whose scenes with Klara carry more weight than the central friendship.

ClutchPoints, grading it C+, argued the hate has been exaggerated. Ortega escapes the brooding roles she has been pigeonholed in, her chemistry with Tharia feels real, and the film sits closer to Jojo Rabbit than to Thor: Love and Thunder. Its reservations were structural: an overstuffed second hour that might have suited a series.

Critical Popcorn went furthest in dissent, saying the reviewer “quite liked” the film and found the hostility excessive. Ortega is “winning” there — childlike, alien, physically precise — and Tharia matches her. Even the Planet of Films round-up records Wise calling Ortega “a fantastic cheerleader” for the film’s spirit and Lodge calling her “innately charismatic.”

Is Klara and the Sun worth watching? Our synthesis

Our synthesis: go in with the right job for this film, or don’t go yet.

See it in a cinema if you are an Ortega completist, a Waititi loyalist curious about his gentler register — Rodgers found his direction “relatively restrained” and the farmstead world stunning, like The Wizard of Oz — or you want a soft fable on a hard week. James Mottram, in the South China Morning Post, gave it three stars as an “optimistic, fable-like portrait of the future,” quoted in the Planet of Films round-up.

Wait for streaming if you loved the novel’s restraint, dislike jokes landing inside grief scenes, or need endings tied off. On the evidence of these reviews, you will spend two hours noticing what was softened.

And if you have read neither? Read first. Loughrey’s downgrade line, Lodge’s mismatch verdict and Robb’s stripped-away warning point the same way: Ishiguro asks the harder question. The film, by most accounts here, answers an easier one — sweetly, handsomely, with a lead performance almost nobody begrudges.

Sources

1. Planet of Films — review round-up
2. Flickering Myth — Matt Rodgers review
3. ClutchPoints — review
4. But Why Tho — review
5. Critical Popcorn — review