Jakob the Liar
Roberto Benigni'sLife Is Beautifulaside, milking the Holocaust  for laughs  is a dangerous game. Even the blackest, most therapeutic humor turns queasy in the shadow of such monstrous evil; it's like dancing on a mass grave. SoJakob the Liar's got a hard road to hoe--its eponymous schlemiel plays out his  semi-farcical adventures in the mean streets of the Warsaw Ghetto circa 1944.  The skies are always leaden over Jakob's hometown, reflecting the comic  climate that pervades this mostly unfortunate adaptation of Jurek Becker'sautobiographical book(first  filmed in 1975).Jakob Heym (Robin Williams in overbearingly earnest mode) gets tangled in a string of self-perpetuating lies about a hidden radio, supposedly  broadcasting news that the victorious Red Army is nearing. His desperate  attempts to convince a clutch of insistently idiosyncratic friends  (clichés to a man: Liev Schreiber, Bob Balaban, Michael Jeter, Alan Arkin) and  obligatory Nazi bad guys that the radio doesn't exist are complicated by the fact that he's stashed a fugitive kid (a dead ringer--sorry!--for Anne Frank)  in his attic--and by abundant evidence that lies are the best medicine for  the ghetto's skyrocketing suicide rate. Copious unfunny misunderstandings and  pratfalls eventuate in this Holocaust rendition ofFiddler on the Roof(you expect  Williams to break into song: "If I were afunnyman....").  Ultimately,Jakob  the Liarloses its way for good in some very ugly violence and a rather nasty  final twist: the film's ending might just be rubbing our noses in another  feel-good lie.--Kathleen Murphy