Review of Jojo Rabbit (2019) by Moviemitch96 — 02 Nov 2019

TThis was a rather unusual film. It follows a young Nazi-raised boy by the name of Jojo and his upbringing and various misadventures in war-torn Germany, all alongside his mother (Scarlett Johansson), a young Jewish girl he discovers in hiding (Thomasin McKenzie), and his imaginary friend who happens to be a much sillier version of Adolf Hitler (Taika Waititi, who also directs the film.

) Throughout much of the film's runtime, it gave me some serious Wes Anderson vibes, what with it's quirky and bizarre nature, eccentric characters, and offbeat dialogue and jokes. Unfortunately, it's these jokes that hindered the film's potential for me.

Just about all of them fell rather flat to me personally, and a surprising amount of them felt really dragged out and in slightly bad taste too. All of the actors, which also included the likes of Sam Rockwell and Rebel Wilson, are given great opportunities to shine and a fair amount of screentime, but I simply felt as though their talents were undermined by the film's flimsy premise and story.

Overall, it made a decent effort, but not only did it feel like a Wes Anderson wannabe, I simply found it rather forgettable and subpar in terms of its attempts at dark humor, especially when looking at something as risque as jokes about Nazis and anti-Semitism during WWII.