Klara and the Sun Just Became Waititi's Worst Reviewed Film

Klara and the Sun has hit United States theaters, and critics have given Taika Waititi's literary sci-fi adaptation the harshest reception of his career. The film, which stars Jenna Ortega as a solar-powered android searching for a home, debuted on the review aggregator with one of the lowest scores ever handed to a major studio release from an Oscar-winning director. For a project that spent years in development and premiered to a cold response at the BFI London Film Festival, the numbers confirm a rough landing.

The film arrived in American cinemas on October 23 through Sony Pictures, a week after its October 15 festival premiere in London. Early reviews settled at twenty percent on the aggregator from an initial batch of ten reviews, according to Comic Basics — a career low for Waititi that also ranks among the worst-reviewed releases of Ortega's career. The Metacritic average sat in the low twenties across its first six reviews. Even as a few more notices trickled in and lifted the score into the mid-twenties, the verdict has barely moved: this is a misfire on the scale of a director known for hits.

A beloved novel meets the wrong tone

The source material seemed bulletproof. Kazuo Ishiguro's 2021 novel follows Klara, an Artificial Friend — a solar-charged companion robot sold in shops to ease children's loneliness — as she waits in a store window praying to the sun for a home. She is eventually chosen by Josie, a sick teenager played by Mia Tharia, whose mother Chrissie is played by Amy Adams. Natasha Lyonne plays the store manager, while Steve Buscemi portrays a man who holds the key to understanding the girl's condition. The book was longlisted for the Booker Prize and is one of the most acclaimed novels of the decade.

The screenplay, written by Waititi with Dahvi Waller, carries Ishiguro as an executive producer — but critics say the adaptation never finds the novel's register. Damon Wise of Deadline called the film a "curiously flat comedy-drama" that is only "sporadically funny," according to Planet of Films' review roundup, arguing that Waititi should have been a natural fit for the material but that the movie fails on nearly every front it promises. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave it a single star out of five, attacking its overbearing quirkiness. The New York Post went further on the lead performance, describing Ortega as an "annoying robot" — a charge aimed at how the character plays on screen rather than at the actor's craft, which other reviewers praised. One critic called her work in the role "delightful," a rare bright spot in an otherwise bleak consensus.

The through line in the reviews is a mismatch of sensibilities. Waititi's signature mix of quirk and heart, the engine of Jojo Rabbit, collides with Ishiguro's quiet, devastating restraint. Ben Gibbons of Screen Rant argued that the film suffers from a lack of depth and misses the heart the story needs, turning a philosophical tale into a heavy-handed comedy. Comic Basics compared the failure to Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go, another literary sci-fi adaptation that struggled to capture its source's subtleties. The complaint is not that the novel was unfilmable; it is that the funniest director in the room told the saddest story on the shelf.

A long road to a cold opening

The project had been circling for years. The adaptation was announced in 2020 and finished filming in the spring of 2024, then sat on Sony's shelf while the studio weighed timing, according to the timeline assembled by Comic Basics. Waititi told Screen Daily earlier this year that he was still in talks with the studio about when and where it would come out. A premiere slot at the London festival, skipping the September circuit, now reads as a quiet vote of no confidence — and the reviews that followed made the strategy look prescient.

Context makes the fall steeper. The new low sits well below Waititi's previous disappointments: his sports comedy Next Goal Wins holds a score in the mid-forties, and the much-maligned Thor: Love and Thunder did far better than this. For Ortega, the timing is awkward too. Her previous feature, the 2025 release Hurry Up Tomorrow, holds a score in the low teens, making Klara and the Sun her second-lowest-rated film, according to Collider. The Wednesday star has carried two straight theatrical releases that critics have rejected — though general audiences have not yet weighed in, since no audience score had populated at the time of writing.

What the flop actually means

For young viewers, the irony is hard to miss. This is a movie about an artificial companion — one of the most Gen Z-friendly premises imaginable in a year when AI stories dominate the culture — and the adaptation flattened it into something critics found unwatchable. The failure also lands as a cautionary tale about beloved IP: a Booker-longlisted novel, a Nobel laureate's name in the credits, and an Oscar-winning director could not save a film that misread its own tone.

There is a counterpoint worth noting. Review-aggregator scores this early are snapshots, not verdicts; the first batch of festival reviews often skews harsher than the wider critical pool. Audience reactions could still diverge sharply, as they have for plenty of films critics dismissed. And Ishiguro himself is already moving on: the novelist is teaming up with Tim Burton on an untitled original film set in postwar Japan, a pairing that suggests Hollywood has not lost faith in the source material, whatever it thinks of this version.

Whether Klara and the Sun finds a second life with viewers or settles into the record books as Waititi's worst-reviewed film, it will stand as a case study in adaptation. The novel asks what love looks like from the outside. The film, critics say, never quite got inside. For fans of the book, the best version of this story is still on the shelf — and it was published in 2021.

The weekend's box office tells its own story about what audiences chose instead: DC's R-rated Clayface faced a surprise documentary challenger in a crowded frame. Earlier this month, the Elizabeth Holmes documentary stunned with a fifteen-million-dollar debut, proving event-style releases can still pull crowds. And for viewers who want craft over spectacle, Laika's hand-built Wildwood offered October's handmade alternative.