Jojo Rabbit is a cinematic adaptation of a book by Christine Leunens set in Germany during World War II about a little boy who is a member of the Hitler Youth, has Adolf Hitler as an imaginary friend and a mom who hates war. More importantly for me, it is Taika Waititi’s latest movie, and I love him in this order: Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Thor: Ragnarok and What We Do In The Shadows so even though I’m tired of Scarlett Johansson playing every role and Sam Rockwell playing his latest in a long line of lovable racists (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Woman Walks Ahead, Vice, The Best of Enemies), I have nothing but love for Waititi and will see all his films.
Just because I will see all of Waititi’s films, does not mean that I will love all of them, and Jojo Rabbit is sadly not one of his best although it has genius moments and his heart still shines through. Visually it is perfect. Waititi is scathing in the way that he makes the point that war is just grown, misguided children playing a game with devastating consequences then when he initially switches and shows the Americans winning (oops, spoiler alert), it is the one time that I recall a moment of horror in the way that he shoots them similarly so their victory is less noble and more horrifying to suggest that victory does not mean that the right lessons were taken away from this war, just a different side won and are still glorifying the same death cult. Of all the actors, I think that Rebel Wilson, whom up to this point I did not get why she is a thing because I have not seen her in anything except Bridesmaids, beautifully captured the quotidian banality of evil without losing the humor or winking at the audience as if to say that her character is ridiculous. “Go, shoot anyone who looks different from you!” Waititi is brilliant at establishing visual themes that are not blatant as they are being introduced and revisited, but emotionally hit like a grenade when they are supposed to.
What We Do In The Shadows is a movie about vampires, but Jojo Rabbit is the first time that I am aware of Waititi dipping his toe into horror. His early appearances as Hitler are accompanied by whooshing noises normally reserved for the sudden landing of a monster like a vampire, ghost or phantom in flight landing to pursue an unwitting victim, which in this case is the titular character. It is just one of many genius ways that the audio for this movie nails the tone that it is trying to establish. He borrows J Horror visual cues to introduce a character whom Nazis think of as monsters and is unrelenting in his emphasis on this point. The anachronistic use of couple of popular songs as bookends impressed me. There is no better way to establish the frenzy of Hitler worship, and anyone who knows me will not be surprised that I loved the last song as a new ode to freedom.
The majority of the acting is perfect, especially and including Johansson, who can now add to her resume that even her feet are good at acting thanks to Waititi. Alfie Allen is criminally under utilized in the movie (Game of Thrones’ Theon Greyjoy.) Unfortunately here is where Jojo Rabbit begins to falter for me. When an adult isn’t onscreen, I began to check out. I’m not sure if I did not like the lead actor and/or his character, which I definitely never liked even up to the end of the film (it does not help if you are up to date with Batwoman and just finished Episode 6 of the first season, but I won’t spoil it with details). It also does not help that one kid actor, Archie Yates, who plays the protagonist’s pudgy buddy is simultaneously adorable, but somehow acts in tune with the entire vibe of the movie. Waititi sees the film as a struggle for the protagonist’s soul, but, and here is where I also may have a problem with the story as well, I am not convinced that the battle was not already lost, and Hitler Youth was not just one sign of the protagonist’s damaged soul. You don’t have to be a Nazi to be a trash individual although it is certainly one of the final rungs on the descent to hell. If Roman Griffin Davis’ job was to get me to like the titular character in spite of all external evidence that he was a horrible kid, then it did not work whereas I liked Yates’ character. I know that I can be tough on kid actors, but Davis wasn’t strong enough to pull off his job. This year I saw a handful of films and television shows with children as protagonists so it is possible to please me, and Davis failed.
Also overall I also did not like the story, and I’ll never find out if the problem lies in Waititi’s adaptation of the novel or the novel itself. I live in a nation where I have been in the midst of a deluge since 2016 of stories humanizing Presidon’t supporters and casting them in the lead. While Jojo Rabbit clearly hates Nazism, Waititi loves people, including the Nazis, which makes him a better person than me. He is definitely a love the sinner, hate the sin kind of guy and is never incredulous that a woman who hates war and eschews Nazi propaganda could produce such a Nazi loving kid. I know that good parents produce bad kids all the time (see God with Adam and Eve, the parents of the Columbine shooters, etc.), and it is the psychologically smarter move not to forbid any Nazi paraphernalia in the house so the kid does not cling to evil harder, but if Nazi Germany shares any similarities with Presidon’t’s USA, and God, I hope not for my sake, then the problem is the liberals who love their Nazis and will always choose the ones that they love over their theoretical beliefs because they don’t see their Nazis as bad people. Also the majority of liberals subconsciously believe a lot of Nazi shit and can pose more of a danger to those that they claim to be allies with than the Nazis, which was the unintended effect of one scene between the mother and a person that she is helping. No man may be good except God, but we’ve mastered evil. I don’t need a movie to humanize Nazis. We have the New York Times for that.
In the end, Jojo Rabbit leaves the viewer worrying about what will happen to the Nazis that we meet in the movie now that they lost the war. While I think that it is important to see them as people and not other them so we don’t fall for the same tricks that they did, to borrow the essence of a phrase from Chicago, they had it coming. The only time that I rooted hard in the film is when a character exclaimed, “We are descended from those who wrestle with angels and kill giants. We are chosen.” Yesssssssssss! I don’t want a historical, satire version of Me And Earl and the Dying Girl. Still love Waititi, but I’m not about that vibe.