Review: Jenna Ortega plays a sad robot in the shamelessly programmatic 'Klara and the Sun'

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Set us as preferred Early on in “Klara and the Sun,” Michael Giacchino’s aggressively precious score makes its first appearance, practically serving as a warning for what’s to come.The syrupy strings, treacly piano and awed choral vocals conjure an atmosphere of strained enchantment, suggesting a film burdened by fatal amounts of whimsy and emotional manipulation.

Adapting Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel about a lifelike robot who’s purchased to be a lonely teenager’s friend, filmmaker Taika Waititi continues down the saccharine path he has traveled since 2019’s Oscar-winning “Jojo Rabbit.” The movie’s guileless android will learn about love, loss and other far-too-common human experiences.Meanwhile, the audience will wonder if the sentimental pummeling will ever end.Jenna Ortega plays Klara, the B1 model of a robot companion known as Artificial Friend, or AF.

She lives in a dreary future.(A side character mentions that World War III occurred a while ago, though on the plus side, apparently the internet has now been outlawed.) Klara is an outdated AF — the much more advanced B3 is all the rage — and if she doesn’t find someone to buy her at the rundown shop where she and other B1s are sold, she’ll get turned into scrap metal.

The smiling, amiable android understands very little about her surroundings, believing that the sun (which recharges her batteries) is a deity that listens to her prayers to be chosen by a human.Klara’s fellow B1s may consider her peculiar but in a Waititi movie, being a quirky oddball is actually a badge of honor.Just then, Klara meets Josie (Mia Tharia), an eccentric teen, and her distant single mother, Chrissy (Amy Adams).

This family has endured tragedies — Josie’s sister died when she was very young, which prompted Josie’s father to leave the family — but Josie ...