Jojo Rabbit

Rating: 5/10 (4 February 2020)

Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) is a 10 year old boy in Nazi Germany. A lifetime of indoctrination has given him a hatred of Jews. He has been drafted into the Hitler Youth where he does not fit in. He is nicknamed Jojo Rabbit and bullied by the older boys.
His mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) is raising Jojo alone. His father is missing, his sister is dead. He discovers that his mother has been hiding a teenage Jewish girl called Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) in the attic. To make his life more complicated, he has an imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi.)
This would had been a brilliant film if the Monty Python team had made it in their prime. If Mel Brooks had made this, he would have added a song and dance number called Springtime for Hitler.
Instead Taika Waititi's film left me cold. It had an air of smugness and self congratulation about how zany this movie is. Only Sam Rockwell caught the spirit of the film with his Captain Klenzendorf, a soldier who knows the war is lost. This is such an uneven film and the satire is off target too many times.
Eventually Jojo and Elsa reach an understanding but at times I thought I was watching an episode of Allo Allo.