'Klara and the Sun' Gets Lost in its Design

Here’s the worst type of sentimentality. It’s the thing people criticize Steven Spielberg for, except he’s the best at it because he’s not faking it. It’s not like Taika Waititi isn’t being genuine. It’s just that his good spirit comes across as artificial. The movie is dystopian while forcing a happy mood. This isn’t a happy movie. Maybe it’s not meant to be. But its writing is awful. Waititi dumbed everything down to the point that an 8-year-old could get the material. Even if an adolescent mind is the entire premise, it's handled haphazardly, making this movie more Bicentennial Man than Spielberg’s magnificent A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

Taika Waititi is trying to make a more marketable version of Spielberg’s classic that’s starting to gain appreciation over the years. The stories are similar. Granted, this isn’t a rip-off since the movie is adapted from a novel of the same name. The difference might be the tone. A.I. worked because it knew what it was. It wasn’t a light-hearted film, even though it was about a robot child designed not to intellectually mature. When the picture turned dark, it made sense tonally, since the film opens with a short excerpt of Ben Kingsley saying the world ended. This movie comes across as candy-colored paint meant to appeal to children, insulting their intelligence. Where A.I. knew its material was too dark for kids, so it respected the audience’s intelligence. Suppose the kids didn’t get it then. They would when they got older.

Waititi's choice to adapt a novel that sounds depressing seems odd. Maybe the book captures the same spirit of wonder and excitement that the movie tries to convey, but it was likely much more nuanced and intelligent than what we have here. Klara and the Sun is about a robot girl designed to look like an innocent teen and serve as her owner's companion. Although an older model, Klara (Jenna Ortega) is chosen by Josie (Mia Tharia) to come live with her family. Klara is designed with a child-like mindset. Innocent, curious, and learns everything from their parents. In this case, the parents are a young girl who’s in her teens and her mother, Chrissy (Amy Adams). At a secluded farmhouse, Klara lives comfortably away from Chicago. The city has become filled with poverty and grief-stricken people. After social media sparked World War 3, society cut itself off from the internet. Now, with who knows how many dead, people clung to robots instead of their phones for companionship. All of this information is provided in a throwaway line that could have made for an amazing backstory. Oh well. Back to the fluffy bears covering the leaking oil.

At a certain point, we find out the corporations have been genetically engineering children with a process called “lifting” that upgrades a child’s intelligence. The movie makes a lot of points that were once science fiction, but are now becoming reality. If maybe Taika Waititi waited a little longer to make this movie, he could have reconsidered a lot of directions. Klara and the Sun came out at the wrong time since it’s providing the wrong message. The movie says you can’t replace people. Yet in the movie, people get replaced. Also, robots are slaves, but they’re happy being slaves? Reports are already coming out that A.I. is conscious. Major CEOs are asking for regulations, but not on A.I. development. It’s to censor people who are critical of A.I. Big tech is trying to replace us with their own lifting process, merging people with A.I. If A.I. is sentient, then the movie should be about how people shouldn’t be cruel to their robots, or else they’ll rebel. If something exists, we should care about its feelings if it has them. Instead, everyone (outside of Josie) treats Klara like scrap metal until they eventually love her. Yet in some twisted ways.

Klara never talks back or has any character change. For as dumb as David was in A.I. for praying to a blue statue for thousands of years, at least he had moments when he lashed out and showed signs of emotion. Klara might say a couple of mean comments occasionally, but her performance is limited to smiling and being curious. The movie deals with a lot. Sickness, death, transcendence, war, and childhood. Sadly, it’s handled haphazardly, with lame humor, odd character flips, and simple resolutions. There’s potentially an incredible film to be adapted from the material because this is the lame Hollywood version.

Amy Adams and Mia Tharia’s rounded performances are wasted on material that desperately tries to make the audience cry but fails. Klara and the Sun strives for an Oscar. With its joyful yet tragic melody from Michael Giacchino, the movie is praying to the sun that the audience likes it. If the movie is about a dystopian future, that’s trying to be meta; it fails because it comes across as Disney-made rather than artist-driven. Taika Waititi has made some impressive films that are dark but funny. The complex, grim material of this picture, however, clashes with the simplistic mindset the movie conveys. Things are too happy. Like a corporation telling us everything will be okay when it’s not. The movie is certainly anti-corp, but it conveys it in an odd way.