Are you kidding me?

Rating: 3/10 (15 December 2013)

This is a very beautiful film, with excellent acting and a typically lush score by John Williams. But it has all the depth and complexity of a Hallmark Hall of Fame special. This is war and death as we would like it to be, sentimentalized as a distant memory though the eyes of a child.
There is, for example, a wonderful children's choral rendition of "Deutschlandlied" that I suppose was to have the same effect as "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" in "Cabaret". Except there is no context provided for it. Naziism has become a kind of movie shorthand for evil that requires no explanation or elaboration. The audience will have to be responsible for bringing what it knows of Nazi atrocities to the theater because, aside from breaking a few windows, burning books and roughing a few people up, what was so terrible that people should be afraid of them?
A few key scenes I loved and will always remember but I have to admit I found myself reaching for the remote more than once to speed things up, getting the point of a scene long before the characters did. I could hear sniffles throughout the theater and thought, really? You're buying this?
All-in-all, a well-meaning but misguided attempt in the vein of "Life Is Beautiful" and "The Boy In The Striped Pajamas".