Peculiar

Rating: 1/10 (7 February 2020)

About 3 minutes into this film I just knew I wouldn't like it. It might be some people's thing but the comedy is just so juvenile. Yea, it's a 12 and marketed around a young boy and his imaginary friend Hitler, so what do you expect? But really it felt like that typical American Will Ferrell/Adam Sandler slapshtick. Hitler was probably the funniest part of this film just for the stupidity of it, but is fat man in funny moustache an original idea? No. I'm sure there's a million and one better portrayals of this idea somewhere in Hollywood.
Also, and this was the deal-breaker for me, is the weird directing decision to make the narrative of this story so skittish and nonsensical. All throughout, the story just doesn't feel continuous & always lacking in context, and then about half-way through it becomes largely one-room based. It just didn't feel like a film, but more like a vaguely connected series of skits with mild attempts at bittersweetness in it.
These attempts at bittersweetness didn't really work for me either. There are bits in the film where it's nice to see the delusion of German people at the time, the hopelessness of it, the comedy disguising the horrors going on around them, but it's so understated and surrounded by dry attempts at comedy that it becomes hard to take seriously. The tone's all wrong.
The acting's alright, but for some reason they make everyone have German accents. Maybe for comedy, but they never make a joke around German mispronunciations or anything like that, so I was just distracted by how bad the accents were most of the time. Everyone just sounded Russian or braindead.
If you wanna watch this film with your kid, it might be alright. There's some sensitive ideas expressed but they probably won't notice as they'll be too busy laughing at Hitler (fantastic). Just don't be fooled by the good reviews as I don't think they're reflecting the actual QUALITY of the film, but more just it's 'humour'