NOT a Holocaust movie

Rating: 1/10 (3 December 2008)

When I first heard of "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" I was terribly excited to see it. I am a huge WWII fan and an avid Holocaust buff. I've read books, watched movies, and written research papers on the near annihilation of the Jews. I thought "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" would advocate what I had long known and become passionate about. Boy was I wrong.
"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" begins with little Bruno moving from his nice home in Berlin to a walled-in home in the country. It is only a few miles from a supposed 'farm' and Bruno hopes to make friends there. It would turn out that the 'farm' is actually a concentration camp full of Jews eventually condemned to the gas chambers. Bruno's dad is the commandant of this camp. Bruno (illegally) befriends a little Jewish boy in the camp. That's only the beginning of this woeful tale This movie is for those that are already WWII fans. There is no 'set-up' or introduction of why the Jews were persecuted and there is no violence or gore. For me, there was none needed. I know what atrocities the Nazis were guilty of. The idea that this is all portrayed through the eyes of a child was very strange. I'm accustomed to more mature movies on this subject such as Uprising, so it was hard to get use to.
I will admit that some of the movie was very touching. When Lieutenant Kotler dug himself into a hole that there was no getting out of, I felt downright sorry for him. And the Jewish boy's face when he is beaten looked sooo terrible....
Though the movie had its touching moments, the reality was that what happened in the movie would not have ever happened in real life. A boy could not have dug himself into Auschwitz. He would not have talked to someone through the electric gates. It just would not have happened.
Two things bugged me the most. The first was the assumption that Bruno was so dumb as to not know what was going on. It is possible that he would have been sheltered from the idea of the gas chambers, (much like his Mother was) but coming from a military family and how his sister turned into a Hitler youth wannabe, he would of known that the Jews were to be stayed away from. Kids aren't that dumb. He would of figured it out that it was some sort of communal camp. A farm??? Seriously? The second was merely how over-dramatized the ending was. The music was so loud in the theater; I thought my eardrum was going to pop. How did the mother know her son was dead? Was she psychic? The father was a bit more realistic. What really got me was how after blaring all that music, the movie ended quietly with the camera focused on the gas chamber door and the lights gradually dimming. I feel like a lot of Holocaust movies end like that...
"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" might have ended with a moment of reverence to those who lost their lives in the Holocaust, but the rest of the film was almost a spoof. For the dedicated at heart, skip this one and go re-watch "Uprising" or "Schindler's List." Something worth your time and money.