You're not a Nazi, Jojo. You're a ten-year-old kid who likes dressing up in a funny uniform and wants to be part of a club.
Adolf Hitler and Nazism were first lampooned on screen in Charles Chaplin's 1940 comedy The Great Dictator. Nearly three decades later, the world having grasped the true horrors of the Nazi regime, Mel Brooks went there again in The Producers, then ingulged in similar mockery via 1984's To Be Or Not To Be. Ridiculing the Fuhrer and his intended Master Race, in other words, is nothing new. Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi's swipe at all things Third Reich, is no doubt in response to a depressing global resurgence of far-right sentiment and can't be faulted in its intentions. Whether it fully succeeds as a film is a different question.
Inspired by Christine Leunens' 2008 novel Caging Skies, the film centres on Johannes (Jojo), a young German lad so fixated on succeeding in the Hitler Youth juniors that his imaginary friend is the organisation's bizarrely-moustached founder himself (played with relish by Waititi). However Jojo's situation is compromised when he discovers that his mother is hiding Elsa, a Jewish teenager, in the family home. With his personal inner Hitler providing dubious advice (a kind of Fascist Jiminy Cricket), Jojo is torn between what his Jungvolk ideology is telling him and a slowly growing connection with Elsa.
A film like Jojo Rabbit works (or doesn't) on how well its disparate elements blend together. This is in essense a wacky satire on totalitarianism with brash, primary colour design throughout, but it also embraces sentimentality and tragedy. Waititi makes for a zany tyrant - all furious mugging and ungainly physicality - but that zaniness spills too far into the film's real world. Moments of Monty Python-level surrealism - like an insane one inside the Hitler Youth HQ - tore me out of the film's world with no easy way back in, so that other starkly serious revelations didn't work like they should have. It also needs saying that a great-sounding comic conceit - like a young lad's lunatic version of Hitler - can wear thin very quickly. While it's initially amusing to see Waititi lolloping in slo-mo through with woods on a Yungvolk training exercise, the effect simply doesn't sustain. Thank goodness then that the comedy-Fuhrer is used sparingly.
Elsewhere the comi-serious balance is struck to better effect. Sam Rockwell (wouldn't you know) is nicely understated in his performance as the war-and-world-weary Klenzendorf, visibly sagging under his demotion to Captain of the Yungvolk. Scarlett Johansson has both warmth and a colourful splash of eccentricity as the mother trying to redeem Jojo discreetly from the clutches of a toxic ideology. And Stephen Merchant injects a surprising element of menace into the broad comedy of Gestapo Captain Deertz. But supplying most of the film's biggest laughs is young Archie Yates as Jojo's earnest friend Yorki. Every unwittingly funny declaration is made with deadpan of a comedy natural, so expect to see him again - soon.
Then there's the heart of the drama, falling squarely on the shoulders of Roman Griffith Davis - another screen novice - as Jojo. He carries the responsibility commendably well. There's innate likeability, yet he also conveys the chill of youthful fanaticism in his early encounters with the secret house-guest. Thomasin McKenzie as Elsa provides a fine counterpoint, capitalising on all the promise she showed in 2018's survivalist drama Leave No Trace. Everything she does exudes realness and the result is an affecting rapport between our young Hitler-fan and the stranger he's been taught to fear.
The film which sprang to mind most readily when watching Jojo Rabbit was 1997's Life is Beautiful, the Chaplin-esque romantic comedy that morphed disconcertingly into a Holocaust drama. Both it and Jojo courted the controversy of treating this darkest of subject-matter with levity. Setting that ideological issue aside, however, it's the 1997 movie that works better - largely because its lead performance (remember Roberto Benigni?) knits the contrasting aspects successfully together. Here those aspects clash too much for Jojo's story to be fully satisfying. Some of it is touching, some of it funny - but it doesn't blend. Waikiki's satirical aims are noble, but ultimately the movie doesn't achieve the sum of its frequently admirable parts.
Gut Reaction: Laughter - yes, misty eyes - yes. But also that sense of not laughing enough, or being shocked enough, or being moved quite enough. Although maybe that's just me.
Memorable Moment: A foreshadowed shock I should have seen coming - but didn't.
Ed's Verdict: 7/10. In an era where all kinds of race-hatred are reasserting themselves, Jojo is well-intentioned and welcome. If it doesn't hold together the way I wanted, it's got lots of lovely individual bits.
Getting divorced with a kid is one of the hardest things to do. It's like a death without a body.
The Gist: Noah Baumbach wrote and directed Marriage Story, the melancholy tale of theatre director Charlie (Adam Driver) and his actor wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), as they negotiate the trauma of ending their once passionately close marriage. At the centre of the drama is the couple's eight-year-old son Henry, who travels with mom from the couple's New York home, when she shoots a TV pilot in Los Angeles, turning custody into a major issue. Mediation turns into the hiring of divorce lawyers, at which point the relatively cordial proceedings take a turn for the nasty. There's only so long the mutual sense of hurt can simmer, before it reaches boiling, with Henry caught in the middle.
The Juice: Baumbach has form dealing with marital dysfunction - in his 2005 film The Squid and the Whale Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney exchanged vicious barbs as their domestic harmony went horribly sour. Marriage Story is similarly tragi-comic, but demonstrates a greater sense of compassion in a screenplay that is frequently hilarious, occasionally devastating and never less than painfully real. Every character interaction is acutely observed, never better than in a scene of painful comic embarrassment when Nicole's family - who adore Charlie - are co-opted into helping serve the divorce papers.
A fine balance of sympathy is achieved throughout this Story, with both Johansson and Driver delivering awards-worthy turns that reek of buried emotional turmoil. (That's until they give vent to said turmoil in one of the year's most unforgettably fraught scenes.) The support is sturdy as well, with Laura Dern, Alan Alda and Ray Liotta all playing the scenes of legal wrangling to honed (and sometimes dryly comic) perfection. The precise and unfussy direction is there to compliment performances; the camera lingers on Johansson as she lets the details of her marriage spill to lawyer Dern, or on Driver as he deals with a supremely awkward 'observation' of time spent with his son. And in one telling legal-hearing scene both parties are framed as peripheral to the procedure that's been set in motion.
The Judgement: 8.5/10. The most obvious comparison here is Kramer vs. Kramer. Marriage Story, however, updates the premise by sustaining equal focus on both partners and by delving deep into the effect of the unfolding crisis on each. It'll cut close to the bone for a lot of viewers, but the excruciating aspects are eased by wit, wisdom and empathy - for characters whose only real crime is being fallibly human. With its broken heart on its sleeve, this is as good and as moving a drama as you'll see this year.
Let's go get this son of a bitch.
Oh were it that simple. Our MCU heroes have slugged it out with Thanos once already and suffered one hell of a losing battle. It'll take more than military tactics and brawn, if they want a shot at redeeming all they lost. Their task will require imagination and ingenuity, along with courage, hope and no little amount of sacrifice. They'll need, in short, to do whatever it takes. That brawn will come in handy too.
I added a proviso to my (pretty incandescent) review of Avengers: Infinity War. Magnificent though that film was, its ultimate worth rested on whether or not this follow-up could make good on its promise. Stakes had been established, loss suffered. If the devastation perpetrated by the big grape-juice guy were reversed easily and with no meaningful consequence, it would cheapen everything that made the first film such a satisfying experience. Twelve months on I am relieved to say that Endgame delivers what was required of it - in terms of spectacle and entertainment, but most importantly in those of sheer dramatic weight. Put simply, it makes the events of Infinity War count.
The film opens where it should - with a harsh reminder of how Thanos' 'snap' ravaged the Earth and far beyond it. Our surviving heroes are desolate, struggling to cope with a world plunged into mourning. Their instinct is for action, but options in that regard seem few. Only when a sliver of hope appears in the form of a plan as intricate as it is desperate, do they find a way forward. And that is all you're getting from me in terms of plot (in the unlikely circumstance that you haven't seen the movie yet).
One of Endgame's most satisfying aspects is that it allows time for grief to sink in. There's no easy brushing off of those traumatising Infinity events. True the plot elements of the opening act - the first of three distinct phases - click into place with commendable swiftness. Within that space, however, is a genuine sense of how much has been destroyed. It's the kind of deep character drama that you might never have expected to find in a comic-book movie - salved with characteristic Marvel humour, but profound and heart-wrenching nonetheless. Everything else in the movie is driven by that experience of deep loss, so that when those air-punching moments arrive later on, they feel properly earned. The flawed heroes with whom fans have lived for a decade are given space to live, breathe and develop - to work out old grievances and to wrestle with new emotions in some very unexpected ways.
There's a whole lot that's unexpected here - and even if you've guessed the story's general direction in all your fan theorising, it doesn't play out precisely how you might have predicted. The shocks come thick, even in the relatively subdued Act One, and once the Avengers' plan kicks in (a mid-section of multi-stranded virtuosity), it all goes a sublime kind of nuts. Fan service takes many forms, but here it's the very best kind - smart, well-honed and rooted in a plot that demonstrates moments of genius. Those who have invested time and emotion in the MCU as a whole are rewarded by a host of mini-surprises that will shiver them to their centre with delight.
As for Act Three - we were all expecting something immense, and in regards to pure operatic grandeur these climactic scenes do not disappoint. What they achieve in addition is a sustained Lord of the Rings-style focus on the key protagonists and their various dramatic journeys, even amid the apocalyptic mayhem. The emotional investments of two (and in some cases multiple) films pay off handsomely in character beats that bring tears of sadness and/or joy. This writing-directing power team - the Russos, Markus and McFeely - has now given us four colossal Marvel movies; they knew exactly what was needed to bring this franchise-story home and landed it to perfection.
Or nearly so. The Endgame character arcs are truly daring, some - arguably - working better than others. The endpoint of one character will be a frantic and divisive talking-point for years to come. And the story's key plot device is of a type that always threatens to drive this particular geek insane (I actually woke up trying to straighten it all out in my head). But those are personal issues and I can happily set them all aside and wrestle with them later. No enterprise this vast could achieve perfection and it's a testament to all involved that they got in the ballpark, let alone within mere yards of the end line.
Avengers: Endgame doubles down on all the reasons people love the MCU - the humour, the heart and the heroism. It's intimately connected with all that's gone before, yet it brings a gravitas, a sense of closure, that's perhaps the biggest surprise of all. The actors who've made these roles iconic - Downey Jr, Evans, Johansson and the rest of them - have never treated this comic-book stuff with detached irony. They've lived and breathed it in all its glorious absurdity, allowing their characters to evolve, mature and appeal to our sympathies. This is the final stand they deserve - one that brings out these characters' best and confirms their importance for more than one generation. You remember that idea... The one to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more? Job most definitively done.
Gut Reaction: Intensity. Genuine sense of experiencing an epic, as I drank in every imagination-popping moment.
Memorable Moment: Too many to choose from, but there was one hug that I felt.
Ed's Verdict: 9.5/10. A resounding, risk-taking triumph that makes you appreciate Infinity War even more and reminds you why you love the Marvel Cinematic Universe in all its multi-faceted vastness. Unless you don't, in which case you're missing out on a whole lot of joy.
