Disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (13 October 2009)

Having anticipated an amazing film after hearing such excellent reviews, I hate to say that I was incredibly disappointed. I felt from the start that the film lacked that authentic feel that other Holocaust film like 'Schindler's list' had. This was probably due to the fact that 'The Boy in The Striped Pyjamas' was set in Germany but all the characters, including the Jewish boy and all the soldiers had ridiculously British upper class accents. Even a bad German accent would have been better! Also, Bruno, who was the son of a soldier, had been brought up in Berlin in Nazi Germany but yet the audience are supposed to believe that Bruno had no previous understanding of the situation whatsoever, which is completely unrealistic, since by the time concentration camps were in use, practically every school in Germany would have drummed in to the children that "Jews were responsible for all the problems". Furthermore, the boy that Bruno befriends (a Jew working in the concentration camp) manages, with no problems from the guards, to regularly meet Bruno, play board games and eat food which he passes through the fence. I just found the whole thing incredibly hard to believe. The only way that this story would be at all plausible is if the Jewish boy was simply an imaginary friend, created by Bruno to replace those he lost after leaving Berlin. Bruno is always portrayed as being an explorer, is it possibly that his curiosity alone lead him to enter the concentration camp? Who knows...but for me, imaginary friend or not, unfortunately this film was just not as realistic or engaging as I had hoped.