☆☆☆½
For a movie about a 10-year-old boy who goes to a Nazi youth camp and looks to his imaginary friend Adolf Hitler for advice, the biggest shock from Jojo Rabbit isn't that it's outrageous but that it's so sweet and charming. Instead of satire to stir controversy and inflame passions, writer-director Taika Watiti has made a sweet-natured comedy with some sharp (though carefully padded) edges.
Touching, compelling and often genuinely funny, Jojo Rabbit struggles when its plot turns to the harrowing last days of World War II and the altogether too real ramifications of Jojo's plight: His mother is hiding a Jewish girl, with whom Jojo finds himself falling in pre-pubescent love.
Roman Griffin Davis and Scarlett Johansson play Jojo and his mother, Rosie; their scenes are beautiful, warm and not at all as uncomfortable as the might (or maybe should) be as Rosie's resistance instincts are matched by her need to play the Good German and allow her son to become a Hitler Youth. The film is filled with talented actors in broadly comic roles, and they all seem to relish Watiti's whimsical, comic approach.
The strangest thing about Jojo Rabbit is how on-kilter it all is, rarely feeling really bold or dangerous, though it's a credit to young Davis, Johansson and Thomasin McKenzie as Elsa, the Jewish girl, that they find a real emotional core amid the zaniness. Jojo Rabbit might never soar quite as high as it hopes, but it hops along pretty admirably.
Viewed December 15, 2019 -- AMC Sunset 5
1800
Touching, compelling and often genuinely funny, Jojo Rabbit struggles when its plot turns to the harrowing last days of World War II and the altogether too real ramifications of Jojo's plight: His mother is hiding a Jewish girl, with whom Jojo finds himself falling in pre-pubescent love.
Roman Griffin Davis and Scarlett Johansson play Jojo and his mother, Rosie; their scenes are beautiful, warm and not at all as uncomfortable as the might (or maybe should) be as Rosie's resistance instincts are matched by her need to play the Good German and allow her son to become a Hitler Youth. The film is filled with talented actors in broadly comic roles, and they all seem to relish Watiti's whimsical, comic approach.
The strangest thing about Jojo Rabbit is how on-kilter it all is, rarely feeling really bold or dangerous, though it's a credit to young Davis, Johansson and Thomasin McKenzie as Elsa, the Jewish girl, that they find a real emotional core amid the zaniness. Jojo Rabbit might never soar quite as high as it hopes, but it hops along pretty admirably.
Viewed December 15, 2019 -- AMC Sunset 5
1800
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