There's much about Jojo Rabbit that seems like it shouldn't work, starting with its very premise.
The dramedy centers on a 10-year-old Nazi enthusiast in 1940s Germany. His best friend is an imaginary Adolf Hitler, who comes across like 10-year-old brat trapped in a grown man's body. And it's executed with a quaint, quirky, practically Wes Andersonian flair.
But if anyone could pull it off, it's probably writer-director Taika Waititi — and pull it off he does, delivering a hard-to-categorize crowdpleaser bursting with humor, heart, and tragedy.
Over his career, Waititi's demonstrated a particular knack for stories of children working through harsh circumstances via fantasy, wishful thinking, and no small amount of wry humor. Jojo Rabbit, like Hunt for the Wilderpeople and Boy before it, isn't a film for kids per se, but it's able to speak to them on their level, acknowledging their innocence without turning away from real dangers.
Jojo Rabbit begins with Johannes, aka Jojo, getting dressed for his first day of at Hitler Youth camp as Hitler (played by Waititi) puffs him up with a pep talk: "You're the bestest, most loyal little Nazi I've met." Once he arrives at the camp, he's commanded to kill a rabbit to prove his courage, taught that Jews are scaly, scary monsters, and engaged in childish conversations about how awesome it would be to kill a Jew to win Hitler's favor.
What is disturbing is not that Jojo is a particularly hateful person, but that he isn't. His adoration of Hitler is an expression of childish enthusiasm, the way another kid in another time and place might fixate on dinosaurs or fairy-tale princesses; his antisemitism is a reflection the good-versus-evil stories he's been taught his whole life; his eagerness to join the Hitler Youth is mostly about wanting to join a cool club.
Thomasin McKenzie and Roman Griffin Davis in 'Jojo Rabbit'
Image: Kimberley French / Fox Searchlight
But this simplistic worldview is shaken when he meets Elsa, a Jewish teenager whom Jojo's mother (Scarlett Johansson) has been hiding in their own home. If Jojo represents the naiveté of indoctrinated youth, Elsa is a reminder that not all kids are lucky enough to be so clueless. She lingers, ghost-like, in the walls, in an unwanted state of arrested development, wondering when or if she might be allowed to resume her journey into womanhood.
Jojo Rabbit recognizes that it's a messed-up world we live in, and there's only so much kids can, or should, be protected from its harsh truths.
It's a difficult trick to balance balance the whimsy of Jojo's foray into the Hitler Youth with the relative realism of Elsa's predicament, and Jojo Rabbit does sometimes tip too far into tweeness, particularly with wacky adult characters like Sam Rockwell's Nazi captain. But Waititi's not-so-secret weapons in that regard are his young leads.
Roman Griffin Newman delivers a star-making lead performance as Jojo, going from big to intimate to back again without striking a single false note. He's darling, but not precocious. McKenzie deserves an equal share of the credit as Elsa, who carries much of the film's emotional weight. Both can be, and frequently are, very funny, but they shine brightest in their quieter scenes together.
As comic as Jojo Rabbit can be — and it packs in plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, including some deeply silly running gags — it's these moments of human connection that are the real point of Jojo Rabbit. Waititi isn't doing anything so smug as suggesting that we could all get along, if only we'd talk civilly to each other, or so useless as fantasizing about the next generation righting the wrongs of the previous ones.
Jojo Rabbit recognizes that it's a messed-up world we live in, and that there's only so much kids can, or even should, be protected from its harsh truths. An "anti-hate satire" about an imaginary Hitler may seem a long, strange way to go about making this point — but it gets there in the end, with room for some deeply entertaining detours along the way.
