Review: Jojo Rabbit

The story of a 10 year-old boy (debutant Roman Griffin Davis in the title role) who is a fervent Nazi, and indeed he has Hitler (Taika Waititi) for an imaginary best friend! The plot involves Jojo’s exploits in a branch of the Hitler Youth, and the revelation that a Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) has been hiding in the walls of the home that Jojo shares with his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson). Sam Rockwell and Rebel Wilson play Hitler Youth camp instructors (or in Wilson’s case a bogan Hitler Youth camp instructor), and Stephen Merchant plays a Gestapo agent.

 

It’s not easy to successfully mix humour and Nazi Germany in cinema. Even Charlie Chaplin’s excellent “The Great Dictator” had those regrettable scenes depicting Jewish ghettos. Chaplin himself apparently later regretted making the film, having not know the true extent of the atrocities being carried out. Roberto Benigni managed to do a terrific job with “Life is Beautiful” where the main character’s use of comedy had a genuinely touching purpose: He was trying to shield his son from the true horrors they were enduring. Comedy legend Mel Brooks has made a career out of making fun of Hitler of course, but his whole schtick is vulgarity – anything for a laugh, and as such he gets away with it because he is in no way depicting anything remotely close to reality (Aside from maybe “To Be or Not to Be”, which he only acted in). He’s just seeing what he can get away with for the sake of a laugh. I mean, we’re talking about ‘Hitler on Ice’, ‘The Hitler Rap’, etc. It’s silly stuff without in any way cheapening the horrors that were committed during the holocaust, because Brooks simply doesn’t go in that direction for the most part. All I can say of this 2019 film is that in my opinion, Kiwi writer-director Taika Waititi doesn’t get away with it (Mel Brooks apparently likes the film, but I bet Chaplin wouldn’t have). This wrong-headed film eventually reveals itself to be painting Hitler in a negative light, but spends almost all of its length with the Fuhrer playing the part of a mentor/imaginary friend to an impressionable child. It rubbed me the wrong way entirely to the point where it had already lost me long before it revealed that Hitler was a blowhard tyrant and genocidal monster.

 

I get what Waititi was doing here, it’s ultimately an anti-fascist, anti-Hitler film. Waititi correctly believes that racism is stupid. I just don’t appreciate the manner in which Waititi has decided to tell this story, and I don’t enjoy his sense of humour either. Say what you will about “Allo, ‘Allo” in regards to good taste, but that show was at least occasionally very funny. I don’t find this guy or his material funny at all. Worst of all, a supposed adaptation of a novel by Christine Leunens called “Caging Skies”, it’s absolutely nothing like the source, which was at best very darkly comedic, nor did Hitler greatly feature in it as an active character. It begs the question of what the hell the bloody point was in adapting it then. Beats the hell out of me, I’m afraid. It’s really infantile, simplistic stuff, and I just don’t find Waititi’s wacky schtick remotely funny (I loathed “Thor: Ragnarok” with the passion of a thousand suns). Here it has the added debit of being completely offensive. Apparently Leunens’ grandfather was a WWII POW, and as I’ve said her novel was not at all comedic. So it’s truly outrageous and misguided of Waititi to have applied his own particular wacky comedic sensibility onto this material. Comedy and Nazism can work, dangerous as it is to attempt such a combination. But what on Earth possessed Waititi to take the rather dour source material and go all Wes Anderson wannabe on it? To be honest though, even if I didn’t find the film offensive, there’s another issue: Boredom. Since I didn’t find it funny, and I didn’t like what the writer-director was doing with the subject matter, I found the entire thing tedious to endure, and I say that as someone who is very much interested in this part of human history. It takes a pretty special filmmaker to make WWII boring, so bravo Mr. Waititi.

 

Roman Griffin Davis is alright in the lead, but the rest of the cast are in full-on “Allo, ‘Allo” mode without the witty script. Rebel Wilson (unfunny as always), Scarlett Johansson, and Sam Rockwell either dial up the phony German accents to 11 and/or fail to convincingly maintain them in overall paper-thin caricatured performances. I guess people will applaud the film for being wildly different, I’d rather it be good first and foremost. I didn’t find this good. Instead of being clever, pointed and funny, it’s flippant, whimsical, and caricatured. The usage of Hitler as an imaginary friend was my chief problem with it, but take Hitler out of it and I’d still struggle to understand why this thing was meant to be funny. Like “Thor: Ragnarok”, I just didn’t get the humour at all. I’m on a completely different comic wavelength to this guy. It’s got nice production values but so do Wes Anderson’s films, and the only one of those I’ve liked is “Fantastic Mr. Fox”. It’s a shame, because the scenes between Johansson and the Jewish girl hint at something with at least a modicum of sincerity and maturity. Take Hitler out and focus on these characters in a dramatic portrayal and this might’ve had a chance at working. As is, I’ve gotta throw my hands up in the air at this one. A lot of people think this film is genius. Two minutes in and I thought it was idiotic and offensive and about as classy as an episode of “Hogan’s Heroes”.

 

While it eventually reveals itself to be anti-fascist, this supremely awkward and entirely unfunny film mostly plays like a cutesy coming-of-age story with a wacky Hitler as an imaginary friend/substitute father. By the time the switch is flipped, I’d long stopped caring and was frankly rather pissed off because the story didn’t have to be told this way. There was an honesty to some of the humour of Chaplin, Brooks, and particularly Benigni. Waititi doesn’t even honestly adapt the book the film is supposedly based on. So the film is doubly dishonest, a dishonest portrayal of the period and the book. What a stupid, wrongheaded film that didn’t even need to be told in this manner. The film is popular, and so a lot of you will disagree with me. That’s fine, it’s what makes the world wonderful. But I’ve gotta be honest and say this film just didn’t work for me in the slightest. Your mileage may/likely will wildly differ.

 

Rating: D+