Jojo Rabbit

Toward the end of World War II, Jojo Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis), a naïve and idealistic ten-year-old German boy, joins the Hitler Youth. “Adolf,” a version of Hitler himself (Taika Watiti, who also wrote and directed), appears as Jojo’s supportive imaginary friend. One day, Jojo discovers Elsa Korr (Thomasin McKenzie), an older Jewish girl whom his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) has been secretly hiding in their home. Though they start off mutually hostile and distrustful, the more he gets to know Elsa, the more Jojo begins to question Nazi beliefs, infuriating Adolf.

 

On paper, a dark comedy adaptation of Christine Leunens’ earnest novel Caging Skies sounds like a tasteless trainwreck in the making. However, Jojo Rabbit largely works in spite of its alienating premise, adding the hilarity and audacity of Blazing Saddles-era Mel Brooks and the quirky precociousness (and bright color scheme) of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom to a familiar Anne Frank tale. Jojo Rabbit leans fully into its absurdity, yet it does so while still offering biting digs at Nazism’s vicious idiocy.

 

These dual purposes are perhaps best represented by Waititi’s take on Hitler. The director, a self-described "Polynesian Jew," sports a bad German accent (as does much of the cast) and plays the dictator as disarmingly chipper throughout the first half of the movie. The remove from the historical Hitler is such that the audience is always aware that “Adolf” is a figment of a Nazi-indoctrinated child’s imagination, and the portrayal gradually gets darker and angrier as Jojo wises up.

 

For his part, Davis makes quite an impression in his debut role, giving Jojo a believable mix of vulnerability, gullible innocence, and put-on Aryan superiority. Sam Rockwell, so often the sleazy racist imbecile, gets a nice change-of-pace here as Captain Klenzendorf, who runs the Hitler Youth camp. Rather than the sadistic ideologue one would expect in that position (Rebel Wilson as his female counterpart is truer to that type), Klenzendorf bumbles around apathetically, his indifference masking his bravery as a soldier and his closeted (until the end) sexuality. Unfortunately, the women aren’t given quite as much to work with. Elsa’s character is somewhat thinly drawn though McKenzie does a great job of trolling Davis by feeding him ridiculous myths about Jews to see what he will believe. Johansson’s Rosie is compassionate, brave, and not afraid to smack Klenzendorf around, but she doesn’t have a lot of screentime.

 

If the comedic elements don’t already do so, the fact that Jojo Rabbit offers the Nazi-adjacent a sympathetic viewpoint will strike some as morally irresponsible. It’s not an unwarranted criticism inasmuch as its one that overlooks the film’s satirical intent. As with Blazing Saddles, at the end of the day, the racists are made to look bad, and they lose.