BFI London Film Festival 2026 Preview: Klara and the Sun
What happened to Taika Waititi? At the turn of the decade, it seemed as though the only way was up for the recently Oscar-winning filmmaker. His homegrown brand of offbeat comedy had carried his career to dual peaks of box-office-smashing blockbusters and critically acclaimed coming-of-age dramedies. Yet, six years later, walking out of his latest feature’s premiere, the only sentiment that can be described is a familiar sense of disappointment and, moreover, exhaustion. The same man who had brought Boy, What We Do in the Shadows, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Jojo Rabbit and even Thor: Ragnarok to the delight of critics and audiences alike had become an indulgent caricature of what once made his stories beloved.
How did this happen?
Intentionally or not, Klara and the Sun certainly feels like a direct response to criticisms of Waititi’s recent filmography. Adapted from Kazuo Ishiguro’s eponymous novel, the film is unlike anything Waititi has made before, the director foraying into conceptual science fiction. In an unspecified dystopian future, we are introduced to the sun-worshipping Klara, a well-meaning, yet unquestioningly obedient android reluctantly sold to Chrissie (Amy Adams) as an “Artificial Friend” for her daughter Josie (Mia Tharia). On the surface, this premise bears a striking resemblance to 2001’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence, though this feels much more like an affectionate homage to Spielberg’s film than a derivative rehash. Building upon this familiar set-up, Klara and the Sun actually begins with quite a lot of promise, but before long remarkably collapses in on itself, finding very little to say about love, loss and the role of artificial intelligence in either.
To acknowledge some brief positives, Klara and the Sun marks a welcome change of tone. The film retains the awkward understatement and irreverence synonymous with Waititi’s style, but tones down its comedy drastically from Next Goal Wins or the truly abysmal Thor: Love and Thunder. Fittingly, he allows his characters to be human again, the comedic relief serving as just that: relief, its sporadic use lending the film a much more endearing effect than the near-incessant attempts at humour in his prior two films. This more sparing balance of comedy and drama naturally lends itself far better to the cast, the central trio of Adams, Tharia and Ortega turning in solid, if at times slightly mawkish, performances as a makeshift family of spare parts.
Unfortunately, the film falls flat in trying to invoke any semblance of emotional depth or subtlety present in Ishiguro’s novel. While such explicitness once served Waititi’s deadpan comedies well, its continued reliance on blunt exposition comes at the expense of any emotional nuance its material demands. Substituting heavy-handed sentimentality for poignancy, Klara and the Sun simply does not trust its viewer to feel the weight of its own story, a misjudgement made all the more baffling by the understated, heartbreak of Boy and Jojo Rabbit. This lurches towards a climax so melodramatically convoluted, it borders on self-parody, the film frustratingly failing to impart anything at all while also rendering any good faith invested in its character work utterly meaningless.
As the lights came up and the credits rolled, the collective sigh let out by the London Film Festival audience at the film’s end heralded another unfortunate dud for Waititi. His willingness to try something new is fairly admirable, it being apparent in his more subdued comedic writing that he is slowly but surely learning from his missteps. Klara and the Sun is probably the best entry into his filmography in years, yet still remains utterly detached from what once made his work unmissable. For a director whose career philosophy was self-described as “one for them, one for me” in balancing blockbusters with passion projects, Waititi’s recent output seems to be for no one, with Klara and the Sun leaving a decidedly lacklustre impression as one of the most disappointing films of the festival.
Edited by Teddy D'Ancona, Co-Film & TV Editor
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