Scarlett Johansson and Roman Griffin Davis in “Jojo Rabbit.” credit: Larry Horricks/ Twentieth Century Fox
Following in the comedic footsteps of Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch and Mel Brooks (to name only a few), the dark and funny New Zealand satirist filmmaker Taika Waititi brings us Jojo Rabbit (USA, 2019), a compact but eventful World War II bildungsroman that follows ten-year-old Jojo Betzler (a well-cast Roman Griffin Davis) as he starts his first days of training with the Hitler Jugend, or Youth Corps. With his father fighting on the front, and his loving Mom, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) keeping the home fires burning, Jojo is eager to do his youthful duty and unleash the soon-to-emerge storm trooper within. Luckily, he’s guided and advised by his attentive imaginary friend, Der Fuhrer himself, Adolph Hitler (Waititi, cheerily goosestepping and pontificating con brio).
Training, however, reveals our young aspirant to be less than ruthless – he acquires his nickname from failing a test of supposed fortitude, commits a little boo-boo with a potato-masher grenade, and starts quickly losing confidence in himself, despite Mom, Adolph and his new buddy Yorki’s (Archie Yates) fervent support. Furthermore, he discovers a secret that Rosie’s been keeping from him – a young Jewish girl, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) has been hiding in a secret room in Mom’s bedroom. An uneasy détente is established, with the older girl presenting Jojo with a kinder-yet-cautious perspective while gamely helping Jojo with his Jugend homework on why Jews are scary and evil.
It’s easy to fathom the tone Waititi’s going for here, even if he’s only intermittently successful. Atrocity is always lurking around the edges, yet Jojo, Rosie and the other inhabitants of fictional Falkenheim move through their lives as uninterruptedly as possible, keeping their head down when things get uncomfortable and maintaining inventive good humor. Rosie, as played by Johansson, is an unceasingly optimistic force in Jojo’s life, adroitly turning awkward moments into games, fun lessons or pep talks, and is genuinely funny. But the other sequences that should keep the comedic tone percolating just aren’t executed with much energy or commitment. It’s assumed that once we figure out it’s supposed to be funny that we’ll just go along with it. But, especially in the sequences with Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell) and his semi-hapless support officers (Rebel Wilson and Alfie Allen), there isn’t enough script or direction to support their credibility. The dichotomies of noble provincials against the willful monsters, and the absurdities that might make the barbarity survivable, just don’t balance out.
Much of it is a mess (the Wes Anderson-esque compositions; the muddled early sequences with anachronistic Beatles and Tom Waits music that made me actually wonder if this was supposed to be the 1940s, which I’d expected), and some of it works (Johansson richly deserves her nomination – she’s the hardest-working person in the entire film; Jojo’s later bomb-strewn reunion with Yorki is hilariously touching; and Rockwell later redeems with melodrama what he had earlier phoned in as comedy), but the overall ebb-and-flow of humor-to-horror, beauty-to-terror, just isn’t consistently orchestrated. When the emotionally resonant parts do happen, they stand on their own, almost dissociatively. Waititi’s point, bless ‘im, is Love And Humanity Will Out, but it’s an unfortunate 148-minute slog to get there.
Periscope In The Bathtub 