it's directed fine and there's some good acting, but it's also dim and silly and contrived

Rating: 5/10 (1 January 2009)

The Boy in Striped Pajamas, aside from it looking mostly like a slightly upgraded TV movie (it's financed by BBC) and featuring British and non-British actors not changing any of their accents for their characters, is also too obvious for its own good. Holocaust = bad is the basic message of the picture, and a message that apparently never sinks into the head of Bruno, the 8 year old boy who befriends Shmool, the boy of the title who befriends him across the fence of the concentration camp. It also seems to be a movie pitched at children more than adults, which would be fine except that it's not even a very good children's movie, unless they don't know much at all about the holocaust- which, perhaps is likely. Maybe my standards are too high after so many countless films regarding Nazis and the holocaust, but among the many of them (Schindler's List by far the masterpiece and others like Jakob the Liar remake worse), this one is just... meh.
Does it provide a look at how innocence had little place of the Nazi's plans against the Jewish people? Yes. Does it have a point regarding good versus evil? Maybe. It's scope is mainly centered on Bruno's experiences around the family house where his father (barely one-dimensional David Thewlis) is the Nazi soldier and his mother (Vera Farmiga, almost two-dimensional but not quite) who is horrified by what she finds out goes on at the camps. And, as well, about the kindness of some people who could not comprehend (or just weren't up on the facts or too young, like Bruno) the evil possible with the Nazis. All of these ideas and perspectives are fine. It's the execution of these on film, in drama, that counts, and the performances and the direction just don't add up.
On top of this are some contrivances to the plot that keep things a little too thick for comfort. Maybe I just wasn't as emotionally invested in the ending as some other critics have been, but it starts as being pretty stupid - for Bruno to just casually dig his way into the camp and then slip on the camp clothes without anyone noticing is one thing - and then, the final straw, with the big lesson being delivered as a manipulative sucker punch to the parents as Bruno and Shmool are shuffled off to the gas chamber at just the exact moment they go into the one bunker. This is just a cruel twist, something done to drive tragedy into a story that doesn't provide much except for a feeling of "... what?" If it touches other people who don't see any of the obvious lines drawn in Herman's script or direction, good for them. For me, it's a total emotional sham.