JoJo Rabbit

Back when Mel Brooks made his debut feature The Producers, he stated that one of his missions was to make the world laugh at Hitler in an act of revenge.  With JoJo Rabbit, writer-director Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok) must have had the same mission.  All at once hilarious, passionate and a little sad, this is a wonderful coming of age story where Adolf (played by Waititi himself) is portrayed as a Nazi Youth's imaginary best friend, frequently compulsive, bratty and childish.

Watching 10-year-old JoJo (a marvelous Roman Griffin Davis, giving the best child performance in a while) romping about with an imaginary child-like Hitler is sure to raise some eyebrows in the audience, especially since the movie throws the image into our face in the film's opening moments.  Yet, Waititi gives the scenes an appropriate sense of comic whimsy so that we are immediately set at ease.  He gives the fuhrer a buffoonish quality that works here.  Watching the scenes between the boy and his imagined best friend, I couldn't help but think of them as a darker take on the classic comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes.  Like in that cartoon, it is a boy's imagination that drives the story, and how he shares his thoughts on life with his imaginary playmate.  Just replace the stuffed tiger with a jittery and overly excited Hitler, and you have the idea.

Little JoJo is a scrawny and timid boy, but that doesn't stop him from dreaming of one day serving directly under the fuhrer.  Even in the waning days of World War II, where most of Germany is starting to accept that things have become a lost cause, JoJo enthusiastically repeats the lessons that he learns at a Nazi Youth camp.  However, most view him as an outcast, and ridicule him for his dreams.  While at said Youth camp, he earns the nickname of "JoJo Rabbit" when he refuses to kill a rabbit for his superiors, and ends up with a scarred face and a crippled leg after he is injured in an accidental self-inflected grenade blast.  He does have a friend in the one-eyed instructor Captain Klenzendorf (a funny Sam Rockwell), but other than that, the boy is mostly alone save for the time he spends with his imaginary friend.

At home, JoJo's mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson, giving a warm and complex performance here) obviously is discouraged by her son's blind faith in the Nazi regime.  She is a member of a secret resistance group within Germany that is trying to bring Hitler down, a fact which the boy is blissfully unaware.  Like his father (who is supposedly away fighting for the German army), he thinks his mother believes in the same cause he does.  But then he learns a terrifying secret when he hears someone moving around in the walls of an empty room, and discovers that his mom has been hiding a Jewish girl named Elsa Korr (Thomasin McKenzie from Leave No Trace).  JoJo is not sure how to react to the girl, as he's been led to believe that all Jews are greedy monsters with horns growing out of their heads.  Elsa can sense the boy's fear and confusion toward her, and initially torments him.  But as the two spend time together in secret, JoJo starts to question everything he knows, and even develops his first crush on the girl.

JoJo Rabbit creates a tricky balancing act for itself by combining soft whimsy, broad humor, and eventual heartfelt emotion into a single narrative.  The amazing thing is how naturally these tones flow together in the story.  Waititi never once give the audience the impression that he is swerving from one tone to the next with a screenplay that is well thought out, and executed just as beautifully with confident direction, and beautiful cinematography.  At its heart, this is a boy's journey as he learns to think for himself and become his own man.  It may be a predictable journey, but the power of it is immeasurable, thanks to Davis' confident performance, and the way the script handles the relationships that JoJo shares with his mother and eventually with Elsa.  This is a film that starts out as broad and whimsical satire, but eventually it finds a lot of things to say.

This is also a pitch-perfect film all around.  When it does go for laughs, it earns some of the biggest ones I've had at the movies in a while.  And when it is wise and sentimental, we truly feel for these characters.  There are a lot of wonderful small moments in this film, such as when JoJo sees a truck carrying some soldiers back from the war.  They are all bloodied and solemn, a far cry from the brash and cocky soldiers that the boy witnesses on their way to the front lines earlier in the film.  There is also another scene where JoJo encounters a line of people who have been strung up on the gallows.  Again, this is contrasted with a much later and similar scene that shows his growth as a character, as well as how the later moment changes everything that he feels. 

JoJo Rabbit simply is alive, vibrant, and wonderful in a lot of ways.  It manages to be funny, painful, endearing, and deeply moving, sometimes in the same scene.  When so many movies can't get one tone quite right, here is a masterfully done film that draws so many emotions from its audience, and does so in a skillful way that never once feels forced.  This is easily one of the great films of the year.

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