Well balanced - it will have you laughing and pull at your heart strings

Rating: 8/10 (17 January 2020)

Jojo Rabbit is about a young German boy (Jojo) in the Hitler Youth that finds out his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their house. This proves problematic for young Jojo who not only is an enthusiastic nazi but whose imaginary friend is Hitler...played by Taika Waititi.
From the outset this film looked like it was going to hilarious but how would it go in striking that balance of not being offensive?
I found that the film was quite well balanced with the right level of seriousness and humor. I was laughing at the often ridiculousness of images through most of the film until I got to that point in the film where I felt like I'd been slapped in the face when things took it's inevitable serious turn.
That said Waititi doesn't have you in slumped in sadness for too long. That's not the point of this film but it did need it. There is hope and there are surprises from terrible situations.
In terms of the cast, the whole ensemble was very complementary to each other and not a performance let the film down. A couple of standouts (while hard to narrow down) would be Sam Rockwell - he again gives another brilliant performance and Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo was also very impressive.
Taika Waititi himself did a great job in what is a difficult role to take on and made me think of Mel Brooks' The Producers several times.
Highly recommend.