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Sunburned

"Klara and the Sun" can be a thing of beauty, just like our life-giving star. But if you stare at it too long, or too intently, you just might hurt yourself.

Taika Waititi's adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel builds a retro-futurist world of warm surfaces and tidy technology for a dystopian story of love, grief, and memory, then squanders it on thin plot execution, uneven dialogue, and simplistic themes.

Jenna Ortega plays Klara, an "Artificial Friend" chosen for the ailing Josie (Mia Tharia). Ortega gives a committed performance, layering tics and mannerisms over an impressive range of facial expression. Klara has all the language of people yet none of the context, and Ortega suggests that gap while keeping just a pinky toe in the uncanny valley. She is strange enough to unsettle but never so strange that we stop connecting with her.

Amy Adams is less secure as Josie's mother, Chrissie, and struggles at times to make the character's shifts convincing. Rachel House fares only a little better as the housekeeper Melania, though she mostly supplies comic relief and a nudge to the plot. Natasha Lyonne, as the Artificial Friend store manager, and Steve Buscemi, in a pivotal supporting turn as the eccentric scientist Capaldi, bring the right kind of quirkiness to their roles, adding texture without tipping into shtick. Aran Murphy has less to work with as Josie's neighbor Rick, a character who serves the plot more than he lives in it. Too often, the script gives these characters too little to do.

The humor is more of a problem than its volume suggests. It is never so frequent as to become overbearing, but enough jokes arrive at moments when they release no tension and simply land strangely. The scene meant to introduce the film's genetically elite is a broad misfire, turning them into haughty caricatures in costumes that clash with the rest of the production and leaving the class divide a punchline instead of a threat. Elsewhere, Waititi seems to have lost sight of what made "Jojo Rabbit" so effective: humor and sadness working in harmony.

The adaptation also struggles to translate Klara's perspective into a cinematic language. Ishiguro tells his story from inside Klara's head; the film needs another way in. Waititi sensibly isn't trying to make "Hardcore Henry" with an android, but his visual substitute wears thin. Klara's visual calibration - a pixelated first-person view of her environment ordering into focus - begins as an intriguing flourish. It then hardens into a running joke that sends her stuttering, tripping, and falling down whenever a scene wants a pratfall.

The narrative problems are clearest in the final stretch, where a major turn arrives with too little dramatic groundwork. The film reaches for a quietly elegiac conclusion, but rushes through the developments that should give it weight. I was still sorting out what I had seen when I should have been feeling it.

Michael Giacchino's syrupy score doesn't help. It suits the film's emotional arc, but shares the film's flaw: too blunt and intrusive, it pushes the audience toward feelings instead of earning them.

The message the film settles on, the power of love and friendship, is a greeting-card answer to questions the material clearly wants to ask. It's a shame, because those questions are what earned the novel its acclaim. That doesn't erase what works. The film's design and Ortega's performance give it visual appeal and an emotional center. Ortega's Klara is worth watching, even when the film around her isn't.