Also finally caught up to Taika Waititi’s daring/risky coming-of-age comedy Jojo Rabbit. This is the Nazi comedy set in the waning days of WW2 in which a little boy has an imaginary friend – Adolph Hitler. It’s a satire, a comedy, that many may find it bad taste but it’s worth pointing out that no less than Charlie Chaplin and Mel Brooks also daring to mock Der Fuhrer…
So JoJo Rabbit is about a little boy who is part of the Hitler Youth. He loves wearing his uniform and going to Nazi camp and, as mentioned, has an imaginary friend who looks and talks a lot like Adolph (played by Taika Watiti himself). He believes everything his teachers and the Party tell him, especially about Jews. But when he finds that his mother has been hiding a jewish girl in his attic, he doesn’t know what to do. If her reports her, the Nazis will take his mother away…. so he spends time with her, sure that she sleeps upside form the rafters and eats babies. But, as you might expect (or at least hope – dear god – hope) he learns that she’s a lovely girl and that maybe he has feelings for her.
And… well… the movie is all right. I was hoping for something funnier but a lot of it was just charming? Sometimes in bad taste, surely as well. But the cheerful Nazi clowning stuff is intentionally mockery AND as a way to get into the boy’s head. And one clever thing the film does to defang itself is that the boy is pretty clueless about the state of the world. We, the audience, see that Berlin is getting ready for invasion from the Russians and Americans but Jojo doesn’t. Things going on in the background plus comments from adults go right past Jojo’s devout eyes. So the film is more aware of itself than its lead character.
Jojo is kind of monster but he’s also just a dumb kid. His mother – who secretly works against the Nazis – is played lovingly by Scarlett Johansson. She’s great in the film and is just a wonderfully quirky mom to this kid. She both loves her boy and knows he’s horrible (and dangerous) with his blind devotion to National Socialism. It’s a fun and charming relationship when you don’t realize how sobering it is. Scarlett is nothing but fantastic in the part.
And the relationship between Jojo and the girl is good too. She’s played by Thomasin McKenzie in a challenging part. She plays along with Jojo’s stereotyping of her in such a way that she’s able to dig past his racist walls and make him realize how wrong he is. If this relationship didn’t feel believable and work itself out, the movie would not just be flawed, it’d be a disaster and as irresponsible as its detractors say it is.
So, yeah, I largely enjoyed this film but it didn’t hit me on a humor level as much as I’d hoped. But it did hit me emotionally late in the film and that saves it. I also appreciated the tap dancing it took to make this film work, especially in how it plays fast and light with Nazism… before turning that level of comedy on its head as things start to fall apart for Berlin. A clever movie, not always a raging success, but certainly interesting.
Score: 79