New Zealander filmmaker Taika Waititi put body and soul into making the satirical black comedy Jojo Rabbit, a film the 44-year-old would direct, write, co-produce, and co-star in.
Set during World War II, Jojo Rabbit tells how a young German boy (played by Roman Griffin Davis) leaves Nazism behind, largely through his friendship with a Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) that his mother (Scarlett Johansson) was hiding in their home.
Taika — who played the boy’s imaginary friend Adolf Hitler — won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 92nd Academy Awards. His script was based on Christine Leunens’s book Caging Skies.
By and large, Jojo Rabbit received decent reviews with Rotten Tomatoes giving it an approval rating of 80 percent. Many reviewers embraced the film, some have been in the middle while a few critics thought the Nazis were not demonized enough to their liking. But as more than one critic has pointed out Jojo Rabbit is the type of film that is not for everyone.
See a sampling of reviews below.
JUDGEMENT
“Little Johannes Betzler — ‘Jojo’ for short — the awkward, round-faced 10-year-old played by Roman Griffin Davis in Taika Waititi’s sweet-tempered, zany, slightly hit-and-miss farce Jojo Rabbit, is like any other 10-year-old Nazi. Describing himself as ‘massively into swastikas’, he took three weeks to get over the fact that his grandfather wasn’t blond. He misses his father — his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), says he is away in the war — so he has decorated his room with Nazi posters and memorabilia. And, like many children, he has an imaginary friend who appears whenever he needs bucking up: Adolf Hitler.”Tom Shone, The Times
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“No one makes a comedy about a 10-year-old Nazi and his imaginary best friend, Adolf Hitler, and lives under the delusion that they’re in for an easy ride. Jojo Rabbit is a titanic risk, equal to jet skiing blindfolded or dangling your fingers in a lion’s cage. Yet Taika Waititi’s film is tender, daring, and sharp — precisely pitched so that it keeps its path steady and its ambitions in check. It makes buffoons out of the fascists while lamenting how easily their beliefs can corrupt a nation.” Clarisse Loughrey, Independent
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“Where Boy and Hunt For The Wilderpeople cultivated such delicate tonal palettes — moments of gloriously silly humor sitting alongside grief and insecurity for carefully calibrated bitter sweetness — Jojo Rabbit’s tone often feels at war with itself. While Waititi’s own outsized performance largely hits the spot, when several other characters — particularly Rebel Wilson and Sam Rockwell’s daffy Nazis — attempt to play on that wild, aloof, Taika-specific comic register, they struggle. The pervasive broad slapstick, distractingly inconsistent comedy accents and uncomfortable whimsy nearly unbalances the film.” Ben Travis, empireonline.com
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“Depictions of Hitler as the butt of satire tend to upset some people, regardless of intent. We can assume that Waititi, the son of a Maori painter and a Russian Jewish mother, knew exactly what he was doing when he decided to write the script, adapting a book by Christine Leunens. Waititi himself plays a comedic version of the Fuhrer, who appears as a small boy’s imaginary friend. The director wants Jojo Rabbit to be noticed — and it deserves to be. It’s an audacious, challenging form of comedy, the upsetting kind. It looks from the publicity like a children’s film, but it is anything but.” Paul Byrnes, Sydney Morning Herald
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“There are positives. Sam Rockwell has fun with the role of Captain Klenzendorf, a drunk would-be warrior taken away from the battlefield by the loss of an eye, now apparently resigned to absurd, humiliating defeat; and McKenzie manages to inject a sense of gravitas into the key role of Elsa, even when the script gives her precious little to work with. I suspect the strangely good-natured feel of the film will win the hearts of many viewers, but my own head remained too muddled by its uneven and oddly indecisive approach to embrace whatever quirky virtues it may possess.” Mark Kermode, The Guardian
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“Not so much a spoof, but instead, a brilliantly mapped-out satire with a brain and a heart, Jojo Rabbit cuts things pretty close, relying on scathing wit and black comedy to soften the blow of its bleak, historical setting. It’ll annoy some, that’s for sure. But it’ll also melt hearts. Funny, sweet and surprisingly sincere, Waititi’s film — based on the novel, Caging Skies by Christine Leunens — somehow manages to find a winning balance between its bold humor and the harrowing, real-life scenario in which it unfolds.” Chris Wasser, Irish Independent
