Messy Jojo Rabbit misses the sweet spot between farce and gravitas

Taika Waititi and Roman Griffin Davis in Jojo Rabbit. Image courtesy Fox Searchlight.

Jojo Rabbit is a mess, albeit a mess made with affection and care. Writer/director Taika Waititi sometimes gets across some of the points he wants and landing a couple of effective punches, but ultimately cannot maintain the gravitas he wants and needs. Jojo Rabbit is disappointing, but in a fairly interesting way. 

The film stars Roman Griffin Davis as the eponymous Jojo, a 10-year-old wannabe Nazi living in a quiet German village with his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson). After an incident with a grenade ends his dreams of serving Hitler, Jojo volunteers to work around town for the insouciant Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell), his assistant Finkel (Alfie Allen), and Fraulein Rahm (Rebel Wilson). Jojo is prone to an active imagination and many misperceptions about the Jewish people, which are spurred by frequent conversations with an imaginary Hitler (played by Waititi). Jojo's life shifts dramatically once he finds the young Jewish woman Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) hiding from the Nazis in his home. Elsa's presence begins to shift Jojo's perspective on everything he knows, just as the war winds down and his village succumbs to chaos. 

There's a fair amount going on with Jojo Rabbit, and Waititi does pull some of it off. The film is fine as a coming of age story, even though the main character is a stone's throw away from being a Nazi. There's a nice little theme about finding heroism in the small moments, whether it's secretly placing anti-Nazi propaganda around town or expressing oneself amid tyranny. Waititi has some good points about how little effort it takes for outright stupidity to evolve into commonplace evil; it's easy to make fun of folks who believe Jewish people have horns, at least until they start slaughtering them based on that belief. The film's farcical nature cuts deepest with this point, due in part to the timeliness of such ideology. 

It's difficult for films to shift between absurdity and seriousness given how far the gap is between the two. Waititi, to his credit, sometimes succeeds at doing exactly that. One sequence in particular, a sequence where Jojo Rabbit takes a “heil Hitler” joke and turns it into a menacing moment for Elsa, is quite striking. It's a really stunning moment in which the films reminds viewers the initial the joke comes from a rather dark place and comes with terrible consequences. When Jojo Rabbit makes contact with its target, it hits with precision and force. But the film's batting average is right around the Mendoza line, failing more often than not to square up on those little moments of insight. The final battle scene, the moment when Jojo witnesses the consequences of his dreams, lacks the effectiveness found in the far smaller moment below. It's more silly than stern, suffering from the Life is Beautiful problem of taking an atrocity too lightly. 

The biggest issue with Jojo Rabbit is Waititi himself. His imaginary Hitler shifts the film's otherwise absurdist tone toward twee and cute, adding more layers to the film's constant tonal shifts. The violence meant to jolt the audience loses its effect because the tone is already too far above the grand for viewers to land in the midst of the horror. Having Hitler as an imaginary friend is the film's selling point, yet it's a joke doesn't go anywhere of interest. And his Hitler isn't an interesting take on the character; Mel Brooks took a similar approach around 50 years ago to much greater effect. Making Hitler flamboyant is also an easy choice, a simple way of converting a horror villain into a silly little thing. Jojo Rabbit has a lot of these uninspired decisions as lazy shorthand to the audience. Captain Klenzendorf's motivation for casually ignoring Nazism starts off as a really interesting study of a warrior no longer allowed to fight, but ends up as a gay joke. The soundtrack is uber literal, ending with the most obvious David Bowie song imaginable because lazy thematic resonance. This film is, or at least should be, more interesting than these choices. It should challenge the audience more often than it does, give them room to reflect a little about why they're laughing at the jokes. Jojo Rabbit ultimately loses its focus and can't deliver the knockout punch it winds up to strike.

Review: Three out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 108 minutes

Genre: Comedy

tl;dr

What Worked: Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, Some Themes

What Fell Short: Taika Waititi's Hitler, Tonal imbalance, Banality

What To Watch As Well: The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Producers

Predator sequel can't keep up with its ambitions

Olivia Munn and Jacob Tremblay in The Predator. Image courtesy Fox.

At the very least, The Predator has ambition. For a third sequel to a horror sci-fi franchise, not including the Alien vs. Predator series, director and co-writer Shane Black wants to evolve the franchise beyond its simple base. What started as a hunt in the jungle – one featuring Black himself as a combatant 30-plus years ago – has become a global threat with unexpected heroes and stronger villains. But there's so much to The Predator, so many stories Black and fellow writer Fred Dekker want to tell, they can't corral possibly tell everything. A lot happens in the course of the film, but most of it feels incomplete.

Following the evens of Predator and Predator 2, and skipping right over Predators, The Predator is technically a misnomer. There are, in fact, two Predators in this movie. One is theoretically (albeit not in practice) a good guy, while the other is an 11-foot beast with new abilities gained from stealing DNA from some of the hunted. The big Predator is on the hunt for the “good” Predator, and encounters expert sniper Quinn McKenna (Boyd Holbrook) and his savant son Rory (Jacob Tremblay) during the pursuit. Alongside a mentally unbalanced squad of soldiers (Trevante Rhodes, Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Jane, Alfie Allen, and Augusto Aguilera) and biologist Casey Bracket (Olivia Munn), the McKenna family must evade the expert hunter, as well as a mysterious government agent (Sterling K. Brown) with ill intentions.

So what's really new this time around? The Predator has the larger Predator, one with far better weaponry and even a couple of hounds to unleash upon his prey. There are a plethora of in jokes, from references mocking the first two films to a couple of scenes deconstructing how the name Predator does not actually match those aliens do. The point is for Black and Dekker to show they're in on how campy the series has become, and the dialog is good enough to just barely pull it off. But, mostly, there's the battle among Predators, with the alien creatures warring against one another. Which, as a concept, is pretty interesting. Bumping the stakes from small hunting expeditions to global annihilation makes a lot of sense for this franchise, while adding urgency to a formula that has started to become stale in recent years. It also shows Black and Dekker want to do something more with their sequel, to put their stamp on this movie and to deviate away from the past 28 years of Predator flicks. Interesting is good, especially for a franchise with sci-fi roots and such a horrifying and dangerous threat.

At least there could have been a threat of danger, as the peril is reduced markedly by some CGI Predator action. The original Predator has some excellent elements of horror movie because the eponymous alien exist on the same plane as the humans. They are large and strong, big enough threats to physically intimidate one of Earth's largest combatants. The Predator shifts between a real-life character in costume and CGI, with the latter scenes looking pretty cheap. Once the Predator is no longer flesh, the fear it evokes is gone. Bad CGI, like the version in this movie, sucks the audience right out of the tension the filmmakers try to breed.

The rub with ambition is it needs to have some direction to go with it. The Predator floats because Black and Dekker have so many ideas for this movie they can't keep track of everything. Narratives abound, from Quinn and Rory, to the soldiers, to the Predators, to Bracket, to the future battle for the planet. The focus shifts wantonly, because Black can't manage to track all the stories he and Dekker lobbed into this movie, and the result are a combination of plot holes and unfulfilled stories for the characters. Nobody receives adequate time because the movie gives itself less than two hours to tell 10 stories, and the result is a mass of confusion for an audience tasked with keeping up with so much.

The funny thing is, The Predator is still the best Predator sequel. Even with the mess of a story, Black is a competent enough filmmaker to give the audience some quality gore and decent jokes. The action is shot pretty well, and the kills become fairly unique thanks to the new Predator's advanced weaponry and Black's penchant for ingenuity. Then again, being the best Predator sequel is a backhanded compliment given how bad the rest of the franchise is; none of them could ever match the magic of the original. Ambition won't necessarily carry a movie to greatness, but it does put The Predator above its sister sequels.

Review: Two and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: R

Run time: 107 minutes

Genre: Action

tl;dr

What Worked: Ambition, in jokes, Sterling K. Brown

What Sucked: Abandoned subplots, special effects

Watch Instead: Predator, The Nice Guys