Manipulative, unbelievable

Rating: 2/10 (10 December 2008)

During World War II, the unbelievably naive eight year old child of the Nazi commander of a concentration camp becomes the friend, through the barbed wire (with nary a guard in sight) of an eight year old inmate of said camp. Eventually, he decides to enter the camp (excavating a tunnel through it!) to help his friend find his father. Their destiny is (spoiler ahead) the gas chamber, in a jaw dropping awful scene. Unabashedly sentimental and terribly manipulative, this movie makes Roberto Benigni's famously awful "Life is Beautiful" a model of taste by comparison. Maybe in the original book (which I have not read) this works as a fable, but I'm not exaggerating by saying that there is not a single moment in this film that is believable. For starters: If it was so easy to enter the camp, with just a shovel, how come the inmates didn't escape?. And the scene where the mother cries as the rain is pouring when she realizes the fate of her child and the camera moves upward is a textbook case of cinematic manipulation. Avoid this at all costs.