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JoJo Rabbit

Posted on August 1, 2020August 13, 2020 by Village Vidiot

  “JoJo Rabbit,”  August 1, 2020 (2019), DVD.  Anachronistic serio-comedy from Taika Waititi about the surreality that ruled during the last days of the 3rd Reich and in our own times; well, those before Covid and the US’s imperial collapse.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, as the world collapses around them.  Its 1944/45, and ten-year old JoJo (Roman Griffin Davis) lives with his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) and Adolf Hitler (Waititi), as an anachronistic invisible presence.  JoJo longs to be a good little Nazi, but his discovery of Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), a Jewish girl hiding in the walls, leads to unexpected (sort of) changes.  The laughs are occasional but real, the ghoulish SS men are suitably goulish and cruel, and a Wermacht officer (Sam Rockwell) assigned to the rear guard gives the most interesting performances of the show.  The anachronisms work musically, if not in dialogue.  Unlike most reviewers, I was not smitten with the film.  This is partly because I was underwhelmed by Johansson’s performance, and I usually love her work.  It might also be that our own lunatic Drumpf is no invisible anything and is wrecking existential-level havoc in our world.    Still, it’s an interesting effort.

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