Definitely worth watching ***Spoiler alert***

Rating: 7/10 (31 August 2014)

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is about a German boy (Bruno) who moves to the country side with his family, not knowing that his father, who is an officer, is the commandant of the concentration camp nearby. Being only eight years old, he does of course not want to stay inside the concrete walls of the new house (a building looking more like a prison than a home) but he wants to explore. One day, he goes all the way to the fence of the camp where he starts talking to an eight year old Jewish boy (Shmuel) who stays hidden to avoid work. They become friends and Bruno brings food and games to Shmuel.
As the movie progresses, we see the family deteriorates and the members of the family take different paths. The sister, who is twelve, shows an interest in Nazism and the teachings of the private tutor visiting the new home every week. The mother shortly realizes what is going on behind the fences and has a very hard coping with it.
It was a rather interesting story but the problem is, the team making this movie was probably trying to make something very large and important (and I mean, the message in the movie is very important) but somehow the movie does not reach all the way. On the plus side we have the music score, the scenery, and especially the ending which in my book, was worth a couple of points alone. The acting was decent from the adults and very good from the children. One person in my family said the daughter was so annoying, which I think the director somehow wanted the audience to think. But some of the other acting was not what it should have been and the prisoners just did not seem to be prisoners. Also on the negative side was the fact that the movie was kind of slow. It is not the kind of movie you would see over again, but I would definitely recommend it. I would like to finish by saying that it is sad that adults cannot take the same approach as normal kids do when they meet strangers, but I guess that is not the way of the world.