Come Back To The Raft Again, Jo Jo Honey!

Rating: 6/10 (6 December 2019)

This is a charming movie, but it's not really as insightful or original as its admirers seem to think.
To begin with, there are some screamingly obvious parallels with the book that was once regarded as the cornerstone of American literature, Mark Twain's THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN.
Jo Jo is an awful lot like Huck. He's a small boy who's been more or less abandoned by a deeply corrupt society. Left to himself, he literally stumbles across a fellow outcast -- only he's been taught to hate Jews, just the way Huck has been taught to despise black slaves. Jo Jo and Elsa have lots and lots of long talks when they're all alone together in the spooky abandoned house, just the way Huck and Jim talk when they're all alone on the big river. And gradually they become friends.
So far so good, and it's impossible not to enjoy the way Jo Jo and Elsa grow as characters and the amazing chemistry of the two young actors who play them. But this movie sentimentalizes the adult figures in Jo Jo's life in a way that Mark Twain would have found nauseating.
The Widow Douglas is the closest think Huck has to a mother. She's kind to him in her way, but she's no smarter or better than the adults around her where racial prejudice is concerned. She's a slave owner and she never pretends to see blacks as equal -- not even when she's praying with them! Now Jo Jo's mother is played by the stunning and talented Scarlett Johannsen, and the problem is that she's too good to be true. Too brave, too glamorous, too sexy, too open-minded. With a mother like that, how could Jo Jo have ever become a Nazi in the first place? There's a desperate sentimentality at work in how the mother is portrayed. Like, women can't be evil, so we'll just make the mother a "woke" 21st century feminist who happens to live in Nazi Germany.
The movie sidesteps other problems as well. Jo Jo is a little boy, and we're supposed to believe he only is attracted to Hitler for childish reasons. He likes the uniforms, the saluting, and stuff like that. He has no anger of his own, no resentments, no grievances, no life experience. Compare Jo Jo to Hando, the skinhead Russell Crowe plays in ROMPER STOMPER. Try to imagine what Hando would have done if he had stumbled across a girl like Elsa!
Now think about Elsa herself. She's got a sharp tongue and she's vividly drawn, but -- no spoiler intended -- when push comes to shove she's remarkably patient and understanding. There's a line that's quoted in a lot of reviews, "you're ten years old, Jo Jo. Act like it." That line puzzled me, but the point I think is that Elsa and everyone else is willing to forgive Jo Jo just because he's a kid. Forgiveness is a big part of what the movie is about, and what Elsa is about as a character.
But that sidesteps the question of what being hated and seeing your whole family murdered would actually do to a girl like Elsa. She's a very different character from Gabrielle/Shoshana in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. The extraordinary thing is that both characters come from the exact same historical moment, but they react to it in opposite ways. And the supreme moment of vengeance in one movie and the supreme moment of forgiveness in the other movie are both backed up by songs of David Bowie!
I wasn't outraged by the light tone or the positive message of Jo Jo Rabbit, but I don't think it's a profound masterpiece either. Too many of the more unpleasant questions go unanswered and Jo Jo's forgiveness comes a little too easily.