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\n\tAI meets YA head-on in the curiously flat comedy-drama Klara and the Sun<\/a>, which almost perfectly illustrates how ill-prepared we are for the technological revolution that\u2019s coming to us. In theory, Taiki Waititi should be a snug-as-a-bug fit for Kazuo Ishiguru\u2019s dystopian \u2014 or is it? \u2014 2021 novel, given the director\u2019s affinity for a very particular and peculiar kind of reality-based cringe comedy, but Klara just doesn\u2019t deliver on any of the fronts it promises. Instead, we\u2019re faced with a sporadically funny meditation on life and premature death that, like Mark Romanek\u2019s gloomy attempt at Ishiguro\u2019s 2005 novel Never Let Me Go, can\u2019t quite capture the subtleties of speculative literary sci-fi.<\/p>\n \n\tIf you hated Waititi\u2019s 2019 film Jojo Rabbit, and the chances are inordinately high that you did, Klara and the Sun is pretty much that same film but in the future. But, contested as it is, Jojo Rabbit \u2014 like all of Waititi\u2019s films \u2014 came from a good place, and what we have to determine now is whether he has drifted far off course or we have. What used to be so endearing, so na\u00efve, and so vulnerable, just doesn\u2019t work in this film, and the liminal space between films for kids and films for young-at-heart adults that he used to explore so incredibly well in his work \u2014 no better than in 2016\u2019s Hunt for the Wilderpeople \u2014 now feels like an awkward no-man\u2019s land between two very incompatible stories.<\/p>\n \n\tAt least it starts with a spring in its step. Klara (Jenna Ortega<\/a>) is a lonely pup in a robot shop, praying to the sun in the hope that she will be taken home by a passing punter (\u201cPlease let today be my day! Let me be chosen!\u201d). Klara is a B1 robot on sale at The Friend Store, which is facing stiff competition from Fancy Friends over the road, where newer Bluetooth-active B3 models are taking over from the recently disgraced B2 models (\u201cIs this the model that killed those people?\u201d asks Klara\u2019s potential buyer).<\/p>\n \n\tThe Friend Store is a candy-colored prelude to what\u2019s about to happen, with the wonderful Natasha Lyonne as The Store Manager, a den mother who loves her stock more than the outside world seems to. It\u2019s hard to tell what year it is, but it\u2019s clear that this is a future in which AI is evolving fast. But at the same time this is a future going backwards; The Store Manager talks wistfully about the internet, which was apparently taken away from everyone after the last world war (\u201cYou guys would have loved it\u201d).<\/p>\n \n\tWhile posing artfully in the store\u2019s shop window, Klara catches the eye of Josie (Mia Tharia), who persuades her mother Chrissie (Amy Adams<\/a>) to buy her as a companion. The film is rife with theories as to why, in a city where bars have names like Ho Bots, people want artificial companions, and Klara\u2019s immediate circle of friends are open to all options. One wants an owner who is sociable and popular (a jock); another wants someone who is needy and nerdy, with low self-esteem and \u201cwho thinks they are fat.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tKlara, though, lucks out with Josie, who, in a bid to raise the already elevated stakes, has been genetically \u201clifted\u201d by a medical procedure that makes her a polymath. Josie lives in a remote country home with her not-very-attentive mother, but the real reason for Chrissie\u2019s motives in acquiring a robot for her daughter is more than just buying her a friend: Josie is seriously ill. From here, the plot involves Klara finding out just how ill Josie is, and what she can do to save her, a journey that will take a very dark turn indeed.<\/p>\n \n\tAt which point what\u2019s left of the fun all but evaporates; Ortega is a fantastic cheerleader for the promised spirit of the film but, after she leaves Lyonne and the shop, all that is suddenly behind her; what lies ahead instead is the story of a mother who has already lost a daughter preparing to lose another. The possibilities of artificial life come into play much strongly here, notably with Steve Buscemi<\/a> as the mysterious benefactor Capaldi, but, honestly, you\u2019d have to be really quite thick not to see what\u2019s coming.<\/p>\n \n\tWhich is the problem throughout; everything about Klara and the Sun is face-palmingly obvious, particularly an excruciating scene in which Josie meets her new schoolmates, who listen to unlistenable avant-garde music, wear unwearable fashion-forward clothes and \u2014 are you ready for this? \u2014 lisp, as if the clothes and the music weren\u2019t enough. It\u2019s a weird moment that undermines everything the film has set in motion; for all its naivety, there\u2019s a real push and pull here about the film\u2019s intentions, and it isn\u2019t a comfortable experience. The recent BBC series Ann Droid covered most of these ideas quite majestically, in an adult way that was also endearingly silly.<\/p>\n \n\tSimilarly, on paper, Klara and the Sun is a great idea, a way for adults to explain mortality to their kids while bracing themselves for redundancy. It\u2019s just a shame that film didn\u2019t get made.<\/p>\n