Clever comedic satire......

Rating: 8/10 (30 December 2019)

There's no denying Jojo Rabbit is a clever piece of cinema. It takes the hysteria surrounding Nazism in Germany in WWII and subverts it, by focusing its idiocy through a lens of everyday, "normalcy".
Hatred of Jews with absurd caricatures and rumours. Beatles like hysteria over the Fuhrer, who is idolised by the main character to the point of becoming an imaginary friend. The bizarre rituals and militarised games played by Hitler Youth are all brought into focus. Its nutty stuff and skewed from this angle, often quite funny, as insightful satire should be.
That's not to say this is entirely new. Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator did it first and in a general sense, did it better. Indeed, this film does have its shortcomings. Chief of which, is its retrospective moral outrage, over the treatment of the Jews. As my mother, who lived through WWII noted years ago, "everyone was sorry after the fact but not sorry enough at the time, to do anything meaningful about it".
Suffice to say, it would have been better, I feel, to look more into the character of the young Jewish girl hiding in the families home, presenting her as a human being first and foremost. This would have said more, than moral angst ever could.
A little disappointed too to see yet more anti Russian sentiment. The Russians did not typically execute prisoners, only those found guilty of war crimes. Many did die in captivity but that happened in US and Soviet custody.
That said, what this film does demonstrate in a innocently funny but also very sad way, is how Nazism effected children. Something that is often overlooked, when visiting this period of history.
Suffice to say there's a lot to like here. This films funny, sad, likeable, down to earth, and a bit zany. For me a must watch.
8/10.