Jojo Rabbit released in a few more cities starting today (I was finally able to see it in Boston!) and I know we'll get an official thread in a week or two when it finally expands to the rest of country, but for now I wanted to make a thread for those of us who've seen it already to discuss it!
(SPOILERS FROM HERE ON)
I really enjoyed it. I thought the main boy was great, especially for a young kid with no prior films (who was doing a German accent, no less!). The rest of the cast was also wonderful. Taika Waititi was funny and used sparingly enough to not get grating. One or two more Hitler scenes and I would've been like "ok, yeah, I get it, silly Hitler", but they definitely stayed under that limit. Scarlett Johansen was less one-note than she tends to be which was definitely a relief.
Sam Rockwell's character was really interesting, especially with the hints that he may be gay. The movie did a great job with his character of not making you sympathize with the Nazis necessarily, but I guess of making you wish they never had to be in that situation in the first place. The sadness of his eventual death wasn't that he was a good person so much as that he never had the chance to be a good person. He saved Elsa and he helped Jojo but at the end of the day he was a Nazi - the movie doesn't excuse that, but shows why that's its own form of little tragedy. Especially if he was gay and his options were conform or die. He was like who Jojo would be if he didn't have his mom or Elsa to show him what's right.
I will say - and I know that a lot of you will disagree - that I am a little bit annoyed that Elsa wasn't played by someone actually Jewish. Thomasin Mckenzie is a wonderful actress and she did very well, and in the vast majority cases I don't care who plays what part (I don't care that Mrs. Maisel isn't Jewish, for example), but in movies like this I am a little bit like... come on. You couldn't find anyone Jewish?
Overall though I really liked this movie! I've seen that a lot of reviews are calling it derivative, but I guess since I hasn't seen most of the movies it's supposedly derivative of, I didn't mind. I thought it did a great job of darkening towards the end. The whole scene where Elsa was pretending to be Inga had me holding my breath.
Anyways, those of you who have seen it, what did you think?
Submitted October 25, 2019 at 05:25AM by RaeADropOfGoldenSun https://ift.tt/31IaUOL