Review of The Book Thief (2013) by Marvin B — 02 Mar 2014

Another failure to turn a popular book into celluloid.

The film starts in 1938 Germany and is narrated by Death. We see a young Communist mother taking her kids to be adopted due to her being on the run from the Nazi's. Before she can get there the young boy dies leaving just her daughter Liesel (Sophie Nélisse), who ends up with Hans and Rosa played by Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson. Rosa is very hardnosed and the boss, Hans is gentler and connects with his new daughter straight away.

Hans teaches Liesel how to read, and she becomes obsessed with reading. Understandable as apart from the occasional Hitler Youth meeting or football with the boys, there was bugger all to stimulate her young mind in 1940's Germany. Without giving away the whole story, they are living in Nazi Germany during the start of WW2 and everyone's lives are affected by poverty; anti-Semitism; carpet bombings and death.

For me this film was a failure, it is just too schmaltzy and just doesn't know where or what it wants to be or do. Don't get me wrong there are some fairly solid acting from the cast but they are let down by the screenplay. I mean the decision for them to speak "wit zee German accent" apart from the word "No" which everyone said "Nien" in an even stronger German accent. It made think Rene from "Allo Allo" was going to walk in holding a German sausage. Then to cap it off there were sporadic bouts of German being spoken mainly by characters in Nazi uniforms, was this done to make the audience despise them more?

All in all the film is so sugary sweet it really could be used to introduce the horrors of WW2 to a classroom of 5 year olds, and also teach them reading books is good for you.