Taika Waititi’s new film isn’t as bad as the critics say it is – it’s even worse

What has he done to Klara and the Sun?

Everyone already knew it was going to be bad. You couldn’t have missed the reviews if you tried. Summaries, written by aggregate sites, had already conveyed the true nightmare of the situation, critics tumbling over each other, each pithy word seemingly worse than the last. 

We’d already winced when The Hollywood Reporter called Taika Waititi’s new film a “wretched mess”, The Guardian labelled it “unbearably mannered, unspeakably acted”, The Telegraph said it was “mind-meltingly dreadful” and Variety summed it up as “calamitous, ruinous … hopeless”.

At the New Zealand premiere for Taika Waititi’s new film on Tuesday night, family and friends smiled as they mingled with cast, crew and critics. Everyone tried to avoid discussing those reviews, instead posing for photos, snapping friendship bracelets onto their wrists and indulging in pink cocktails lined up at the bar.

Even free alcohol couldn’t blunt the realisation most of us would have come to by the end of that night. Waititi’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s bestselling 2021 novel Klara and the Sun isn’t as bad as critics say it is – it is worse. If not a career-ender, then about as close as the Oscar-winning director can come to one.

Why this has happened should be studied in film classes for years to come. Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun is dark and dystopian, a beloved book about a droid destined to become an artificial human companion. Told from the robot’s point of view, it contains deep thoughts about faith, purpose, life on Earth and the human condition.

Waititi’s nearly two-hour film adaptation doesn’t contain any of that. It starts inert, flops about for a bit then falls flat on its face repeatedly, and not in a comical way. Like Jenna Ortega’s wide-eyed droid Klara, it seems unsure of where it is supposed to go and what it has been designed to do. By the end it doesn’t even seem to know why it exists. 

The story, which Waititi accurately described to The Listener as “almost a thriller, but where nothing happens,” begins with Ortega’s artificial friend – an “AF”– sitting in a shop window pining to be purchased by a human companion. A grieving mum, played depressingly and unusually one-note by Amy Adams, allows her daughter to choose Klara. 

Once together, you might expect comedy, or drama, or tension, or action to arrive, but it never does. Instead, a succession of scenes that don’t mean anything pile up, meaningless dialogue is delivered, and nothing seems to matter or make any sense. A darker take on a Toy Story movie seems to be the intended direction, but without the pathos, emotion, heart, skill, whimsy, laughs or attention to detail a film like this would require. It all feels pointlessly inept. 

Waititi can do this – he just hasn’t done it for a while, perhaps not since 2019’s Jojo Rabbit, which nabbed him his best adapted screenplay Academy Award. I lost hope about halfway through the CGI mess that was Thor: Love and Thunder, and nothing he’s done since has made me feel any different – including the shilling of spa pools on Instagram.

Yet, a recent rewatch of Hunt For the Wilderpeople showed how Waititi, at his best a genius, can make a film crackle with life, love and laughter, by using New Zealand, by putting our foibles on display. In Klara, I kept waiting for those Taika-isms to emerge, for the deft dark comedy balance he pulled off in Boy and Jojo Rabbit to reveal itself, or for a sudden twist – perhaps a visit from M3GAN? – to lift everything up. 

It never comes. Are there good bits? Umm. Like the recent film hit Heart of the Beast and Netflix’s TV series East of Eden, occasional glimpses of Aotearoa’s stunning scenery emerge, with Wānaka’s rolling hills gleaming on the big screen. Rachel House’s in-home assistant provides bursts of anger, and Jesse Griffin delivers brief comic relief as a robot scarecrow.

That, sadly, is about it, which is not a lot for a film shaping up as an unmitigated disaster. So many question marks now hang over Waititi’s career it’s going to take a while to work out where he stands. He’s already admitted his Star Wars film is off the table. But by my count, four other films and three TV shows are under way. Surely agents and managers are on the phones as we speak, undertaking damage control. 

But the stank of a shocker tends to last – just ask Tom Cruise, currently undoing decades of hits after suffering his own flop in Digger. This feels worse because it’s more personal, a film shot here by our own big shot Hollywood director that is cold and lifeless, an empty shell, a big ol’ hunk of nothing. 

Like Ortega’s artificial friend, Waititi’s heart just doesn’t seem to be in it anymore.

Klara and the Sun is in cinemas now.