"Jojo Rabbit": review

top row, L to R: Thomasin McKenzie (Elsa), Scarlett Johansson (Rosie), Roman Griffin Davis (Johannes), Taika Waititi (Adolf), Stephen Merchant (Deertz); bottom row, L to R: Rebel Wilson (Fräulein Rahm), Alfie Allen (Freddy Finkel), Sam Rockwell (Klenzendorf)

2019's "Jojo Rabbit" was written and directed by Taika Waititi, who also stars as a fanciful, imaginary-friend version of Hitler who cheerfully appears now and then to a ten-year-old little boy played by Roman Griffin Davis in his cinematic debut. The story takes place near the end of World War II, as Berlin is about to fall, and Hitler is about to commit suicide. Our protagonist is Johannes "Jojo" Betzler (Davis), a brainwashed ten-year-old whose father (never seen) has been away for a long time. Jojo thinks he's out fighting for Germany. An avid member of the Deutsches Jungvolk (very young Hitler Youth, or Hitler-Jugend), Jojo goes to a special camp to learn the skills of a true Nazi and hone his ardor for der Führer, who appears to Jojo in imagination as a quirky, silly, and very sanitized version of the real man, thus making clear to the audience that Jojo, as young and unsophisticated as he is, really has no idea of the actual implications of Nazism. Adolf, as Jojo calls him, appears now and then as a sort of inner voice that allows Jojo to think out loud as he learns about the world. Jojo's mom Rosie is a pacifist and anti-Hitlerian who has been, with her husband, quietly working against the Nazis and their program. She allows Jojo to continue in his pro-Hitler folly and realizes that, at some point, her overzealous son could end up turning her in to the authorities. Rosie, full of life and not afraid to speak her mind, also has trouble keeping her pacifist views to herself when she's around Jojo, although Jojo, being young, doesn't quite make the connection between her anti-regime attitude and her clandestine activities until something horrible happens late in the story.

Three things happen, though, to alter Jojo's life-path. First, at the youth camp, Jojo earns the nickname "Jojo Rabbit" after he proves unable to wring the neck of a rabbit. Accused of cowardice, he runs away like a rabbit as his campmates catcall him. Adolf comes to Jojo and reassures him that rabbits are swift and clever, and that in his Germany, there would be room for animals of all sorts (which would seem to contradict the real Hitler's obsession with racial purity and monoculture). Second, at that same camp, Jojo gets severely injured by a grenade that he has thrown badly, and that bounces off a tree in the woods and back to Jojo. For the rest of the movie, the boy has a scarred face and a very slowly improving limp. And finally, while Jojo is alone in what he thinks is his empty house, he hears a noise upstairs and discovers—oh, horror!—a teenaged Jewish girl hiding in the cramped space by Jojo's dead sister's bedroom. Jojo discovers that this girl is named Elsa, and a standoff develops between them: if Jojo tells his mother that he knows about Elsa, Elsa will kill him (or so she says). Also, Jojo realizes that, if he tells the authorities about Elsa, he and his mother will be killed alongside her for aiding and abetting a Jew. Trapped, Jojo determines to learn as much about Jews as he can from Elsa, who indulges his fantasies and prejudices by confirming that Jews love money, are allergic to food, sleep upside-down like bats, and grow horns when they turn twenty-one. Jojo takes Elsa's "information" and makes a book out of it with the hopes of helping other Germans figure out more quickly who the Jews are hiding amongst them. But despite this subtext of antagonism, the two kids begin to warm to each other over time, and without realizing it, Jojo begins to accept Elsa as a fellow human.

Meanwhile, at the youth camp, Jojo has been given duties that someone in his injured state can do. He ends up helping Hauptmann (Captain) Klenzendorf (Rockwell) and his assistant Freddy (Allen). There's an oblique implication that Klenzendorf and Freddy are gay lovers barely able to keep things in the closet. Klenzendorf, in particular, begins to hint that he might not be the most dedicated Nazi, either. At one point, when Klenzendorf and a team of Nazis discover Elsa in Rosie's home while Rosie is out, the captain covers for Elsa instead of immediately denouncing her. As the war grinds to its end, Jojo and Elsa have a moment where they stare out of their home's window into the night, and Jojo asks Elsa what the first thing she'll do after escaping to freedom is. Elsa says she'll dance, evoking something that Rosie had said to her son: that dancing is "for people who are free."

Poking fun at Nazis is a long-standing cinematic trope, and people aren't wrong to do so. Waititi's film is no different from others that satirize and parody the self-righteous and self-serious Nazis, with their poisonous racial agenda and straitlaced, insane ideology. But it requires talent to take such a horrific period of human history and turn it into a dark comedy, and Taika Waititi shows, in this movie, that he has the talent to do just that. It's sad to see what happened to Waititi in later years, when he was given too much money and too much leeway to indulge his crazier notions, but "Jojo Rabbit" is a heartfelt, well-told story about a boy who comes of age and the young lady he comes to love. It's a story about the transition from blind allegiance and ignorance to wisdom, and it doesn't flinch from the idea that not everything will turn out all right—not for Jojo's mom, and not for Captain Klenzendorf.

Child actors are always a risk, especially when their role is to hold up an entire film, but Roman Griffin Davis does competent work as Jojo. Jojo has a portly friend named Yorki, played by Archie Yates, and Yates is also good as Jojo's "second-best friend" (after Adolf Hitler, whom Jojo initially idolizes). Neither actor does the annoying thing of playing the worldly, precocious pre-teen, nor does either actor fall into the trap of appearing too childlike (or just plain acting badly, like Macaulay Culkin in two "Home Alone" films... God, he was a piss-poor actor back then).  Davis and Yates are just kids, normal kids, caught up in a horrifying time. While Davis doesn't quite have the acting chops of a young Henry Thomas (Elliott in "ET"), he's pretty good, and I think he's got a career ahead of him.

The other actors bring their talents to the story. Scarlett Johansson as Jojo's mother Rosie is by turns vivacious and quietly sad. Taika Waititi is generally hilarious as Adolf, Jojo's imaginary friend. Sam Rockwell is humorously cynical as Captain Klenzendorf, but Alfie Allen isn't given much to do as Klenzendorf's assistant Freddy Finkel. Rebel Wilson occupies a weird role as the young-but-matronly Fräulein Rahm, who is fanatically dedicated to the Nazi cause. She's funny in her few scenes. Stephen Merchant, as the Gestapo flunky Herman Deertz, is creepy and familiar-looking. When I looked Merchant up after the film was done, I realized I'd seen him in "Logan," where he'd played the equally creepy Caliban, who blows himself up in that film. And Kiwi actress Thomasin McKenzie does stellar work as Elsa, the sixteen-year-old Jewish girl hiding in Rosie's house. I first saw McKenzie in "Leave No Trace," which also came out in 2019, and I think she's a fantastically talented actress.

Waititi wrote the script and directed the action with intelligence and sensitivity, but he did rely on the old, tired convention of having his characters speak English with German accents (why not regular English, like in "The Death of Stalin"?). How the actors handle this tends to vary from actor to actor. Sam Rockwell sounds fairly confident. Waititi and Wilson both do exaggerated, comical forms of the accent; Davis does his earnest best for a kid so young; Archie Yates, as second-best-friend Yorki, doesn't even try, simply using his natural English accent. Scarlett Johansson doesn't sound completely comfortable speaking with a German accent, but her discomfort doesn't get in the way of a good, sincere performance.

The story takes place in the fictional town of Falkenheim, which Waititi and his crew bring to life with skill. In terms of atmospherics, the filmmakers convey the sense of desperate people propagandizing, Baghdad Bob-style, that the Germans are still winning the war even as it becomes obvious that the Russian and American troops are inexorably closing in. When Jojo learns of Hitler's suicide, this is the final straw for his vaunted vision of a triumphant Nazi Germany, and his final vision of Adolf is one in which Adolf, no longer cheerful but now demanding and almost demonic, appears with a grievous head wound from the pistol shot that blew his brains out. Jojo finally manages to exorcise himself of Adolf.

"Jojo Rabbit" showcases Taika Waititi at his arguable best. The man is a genuine talent both in front of and behind the camera. He's a great writer, too—a man who knows a good story. Which is why you can't help but wonder, What the hell went wrong? when he went on to mismanage the Thor projects, especially "Love and Thunder" (which, at this point, I refuse to waste my time with). Waititi made the same mistake that Shatner did when he took over the director's chair for "Star Trek V": he thought he could carry over the comic spirit from "Star Trek IV" instead of returning to a more serious tone. But taking a story that wasn't his own and trying to stretch out the comedy over a second movie was a great example of Shatner giving in to his worst impulses while also being clueless about what audiences want. This is what happened to Waititi with "Thor: Love and Thunder," which came out in 2022: he thought he could keep riding the comedic wave of "Thor: Ragnarok." Both Shatner and Waititi seem to have been chastened by their experiences, though. I hope that, now, Waititi understands his limits as a filmmaker. But back in 2019, I can absolutely see why he and those around him might have been thinking, The sky's the limit.

See "Jojo Rabbit" to enjoy the artful combination of comedy and horror, humor and tragedy. It's a wonderful exploration of story and character with a final moment that might leave you, as it did me, with a lump in your throat.