Spastic Games

Rating: Null/10 (1 August 2004)

As opposed to the in-your-face bluntness of 'Schindler's List', this works on a pretty interesting level.
Some spoilers...
The modern sitcom works by taking a generally quaint topic and making it as vile as possible. Here it goes the other way by taking something enormously evil (the Holocaust) and trying to inject humor in it.
Compared to Mel Brooks' self-effacing stupidity (OK, Mel, we know you're Jewish already!) this has an edge. The concentration camp is a game--everything is seen from a child's perspective. Notice how this continues until the end when we realize the child has been telling the story all along, not Guido. If we had been introduced to this fact earlier, we'd know something was afoot. Instead we get some effective, yet simple, surprises.
The creators saw the Spielberg parody in this and so they quote 'Empire of the Sun' with the tank and Americans.
So skip the empty first half and get to the good stuff. After this, 'Great Escape' meets 'Producers'.