Jojo Rabbit

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Funny, clever, poignant, charming. Satire well done.

[sc_rufctr]

It looks interesting but I've never been 100% OK with Nazi aimed humour.

[Por_sha911]

Originally Posted by sc_rufctr

It looks interesting but I've never been 100% OK with Nazi aimed humour.

Originally Posted by afterburn 549

I see no point in making light of one of the most horrible travesties in recent history..and I am not even Jewish.
I am sure they will be just tickled.

Originally Posted by Zeke

I agree with the 2 comments above. This thread is on thin ice.

THANK YOU. I thought I was the only one that was going to say that regardless how creative, it is morally bankrupt to have a fun film about a time of depravity and genocide.

[ficke]

It looks great, laughing at the enemy is one of the greatest triumphant in the world.
Mel Brooks was one of the first to laugh at Germany socialist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsql523bSj4&list=RDFsql523bSj4&start_radio=1&t=62

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by ficke

It looks great, laughing at the enemy is one of the greatest triumphant in the world.

+1
All I saw was the trailer Shaun posted, so that’s all I know about it. It looked like a satire ridiculing the nazi cult. I don’t have a problem with ridiculing the cult of Hitler or the people who bought into it.

[Por_sha911]

Has anyone seen the movie? It seems to not mock Nazis but rather following the humorous miss-adventures of a young German boy trying to be a good Nazi. Some reviews I read do say that there is a strong message of love versus hate but, it also shows a lot of antisemitism.

Brooks put "Springtime for Hitler" in The Producers but it was a complete mock of Nazis in every aspect. Not the same thing.

[stomachmonkey]

I'm thinking the trailer was not done right, that the movie is something other than what one may think from the first few clips.

I'm having a very difficult time believing anyone would have thought a fun frolicking satire about Nazi youth would be a good idea to pitch much less that it would have been greenlit to begin with and attract as much A talent as it did.

Theres gotta be a deeper message in there.

Look at Joker trailer, if you've seen the movie the trailer gave you almost zero clue as to what you were going to actually experience.

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by Por_sha911

Has anyone seen the movie? It seems to not mock Nazis but rather following the humorous miss-adventures of a young German boy trying to be a good Nazi. Some reviews I read do say that there is a strong message of love versus hate but, it also shows a lot of antisemitism.

Brooks put "Springtime for Hitler" in The Producers but it was a complete mock of Nazis in every aspect. Not the same thing.

This was my take on it.


Hard no

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Oh my. This is why we can't have nice things.

Having gone to Brandeis, I have many lifelong Jewish friends. Surprise surprise, one of them recommended the movie to me. I talked with 2 others about the preview only and some things they all said (that I can say here) are:

It's important to make movies about hate.

Not a good time to be anything other than a white nationalist. Glad Hollywood is using free speech to take this on

White nationalism targeting boys is a huge concern.

If you like hate, you won't like this movie.


There's a lot all three said that I can't write because it will offend some here, especially given the irony of some the posters here. Net net, 3 Jews and a mensch, that's me, thought it as a really great movie. YMMV.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

I'm thinking the trailer was not done right, that the movie is something other than what one may think from the first few clips.

I'm having a very difficult time believing anyone would have thought a fun frolicking satire about Nazi youth would be a good idea to pitch much less that it would have been greenlit to begin with and attract as much A talent as it did.

Theres gotta be a deeper message in there.

Look at Joker trailer, if you've seen the movie the trailer gave you almost zero clue as to what you were going to actually experience.

There is a deeper message, that I can guarantee you. It's complex, elegant and beautiful one. I would be surprised if you didn't like the movie.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

From the Washington Post, 10/20/19

Yes, ‘Jojo Rabbit’ has a funny Hitler. It’s part of a long — and powerful — tradition.
By Noel Murray

As “Jojo Rabbit” begins, a nervous little boy named Jojo Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis) tries to psych himself up for the first day of camp. His imaginary friend reassures him that he’s strong, smart and capable. The scene is charming and highly relatable — or it would be, if the child weren’t wearing Hitler Youth regalia, and if his imaginary friend weren’t “Der Führer,” played by the movie’s Jewish-Maori director Taika Waititi, himself.

Set in the waning months of the Third Reich, the movie follows Jojo as he tries his best to be a brave little Nazi, even though his kind heart makes it hard for him to hate Jews as virulently as his elders expect. Jojo’s troubles multiply when he discovers his mother is working with the Resistance and that she’s been hiding a Jewish teenager, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), in their attic. As he gets to know Elsa, Jojo starts questioning the advice of his best buddy, Adolf Hitler.

When “Jojo Rabbit” debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last month, it won the People’s Choice Award, a prize that last year went to the Best Picture Oscar-winner “Green Book,” and which in years past has gone to the likes of “La La Land,” “12 Years a Slave” and “The King’s Speech.” The critics’ reaction was more divided. The most persistent knock against the film is that its writer-director Waititi — adapting Christine Leunens’s 2008 novel “Caging Skies” — has pumped too much whimsy and cuteness into a story about ruthless Nazis and persecuted Jews. But if anything, “Jojo Rabbit” is part of a rich pop culture tradition of “funny Hitlers.” And the movie illustrates why these depictions, and a seemingly light takes on menacing dictators in general, can be so valuable.

There have been countless Hitler spoofs. The Warner Bros. and Walt Disney animation departments mocked Adolf Hitler mercilessly during World War II. Mel Brooks skewered the idea that Nazi conquest of Europe was too serious to joke about in his 1967 movie, “The Producers,” wherein a couple of down-on-their-luck impresarios have a surprise hit with the musical “Springtime for Hitler.” The list of goofy Nazis in movies, TV shows, songs, books, plays and cartoons is long and varied.

Of all these predecessors, “Jojo Rabbit” has the most in common with Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 classic “The Great Dictator.” Chaplin tackled Hitler before the United States had entered the war, in a story about a capricious despot named Adenoid Hynkel and a Jewish barber who looks just like him. (Chaplin plays both.) The movie criticizes bigotry and abuses of power. But it’s also about how decent, ordinary people have to keep loving and helping each other, even while being governed by a madman. Chaplin was both suggesting it was easy to ridicule Hitler and offering a blueprint for how to survive him.

“Jojo Rabbit” isn’t a direct commentary on the world of 2019 — or at least not in the same way that “The Great Dictator” warned 1940 audiences about what was happening in Europe. But Waititi hasn’t exactly made a period piece either. His characters speak in a modern vernacular. His soundtrack is peppered with ‘60s rock ’n’ roll. Waititi also plays up the irony of Nazis lamenting their imminent extinction, unaware that their iconography and ideology will stubbornly persist into the 21st century.

In an interview with the critic Bilge Ebiri for Vulture, Waititi spoke about why he tried to make “Jojo Rabbit” feel less bound to the mid-‘40s. Speaking of Hitler and the Nazi Party, the director said, “If we treat it like something that happened 80 years ago and we keep it in that historical box, then we assume it can never happen again.”

So “Jojo Rabbit” is a crowd-pleaser with a cautionary bent, transporting audiences to a time and place when Nazism was the norm, with the intention of sending a few chills up the spine in between all the wry jokes and broad slapstick. The agents of the German state are petty and ignorant. They’re also everywhere and seemingly inescapable.

That said, the dopey qualities in Waititi’s portrayal of Hitler — along with the narrow-minded officiousness of the movie’s Nazis — also serves to demystify evil a bit. The threat the bad guys pose in “Jojo Rabbit” is dangerously real. But they’re not superhuman. As Mel Brooks clarified decades ago, it’s okay to laugh at them.

More than anything, like “The Great Dictator,” “Jojo Rabbit” is a reminder that turbulent times pass; that human compassion endures; that the voices rattling around in our heads don’t always know what they’re talking about; and that even little boys who lose their way can return to their best instincts.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Oh, and bonus that Oggy the Oggmonster from The UK Office series is in it.

[DanielDudley]

Looks like I picked the wrong week to mock Hitler.

[pavulon]

Hitler was a megalomaniac. This sort of person and their followers deserve all the mocking (in any form) anyone can muster.

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by ficke

It looks great, laughing at the enemy is one of the greatest triumphant in the world.
Mel Brooks was one of the first to laugh at Germany socialist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsql523bSj4&list=RDFsql523bSj4&start_radio=1&t=62

I was never OK with Mel Brooks efforts either. (& he's a Jew)

Also, did you know Robert Clary from Hogans Hero's was a Jew? (Corporal LeBeau)

Early life and Holocaust survival

Born in 1926 in Paris, France, Clary was the youngest of 14 children. At the age of twelve, he began a career singing professionally on French radio and also studied art at the Paris Drawing School. In 1942, because he was Jewish, he was deported to the Nazi concentration camp at Ottmuth, in Upper Silesia (now Poland). He was tattooed with the identification "A5714" on his left forearm. He was later sent to Buchenwald concentration camp.

I don't understand how they're OK with it but in their own way they made a statement about the Nazis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Clary

[pavulon]

Hitler was a megalomaniac. This sort of person and their followers deserve all the mocking (in any form) anyone can muster and it is the one thing they can least tolerate.

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by pavulon

Hitler was a megalomaniac. This sort of person and their followers deserve all the mocking (in any form) anyone can muster and it is the one thing they can least tolerate.

Well said but sometimes I think a subject is pure taboo. Like could anyone ever make a comedy movie about the people behind 9/11?
Not 9/11 itself but the perpetrators?

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Hey so when are you guys going to buy some DVDs of the movie and burn them?

[sc_rufctr]

Originally Posted by Shaun @ Tru6

Hey so when are you guys going to buy some DVDs of the movie and burn them?

Hahahhaha

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by Shaun @ Tru6

Hey so when are you guys going to buy some DVDs of the movie and burn them?

Yeah, that will totally happen, because we are stupid and that would be a stupid thing to do.

You still think you are not actively trying to offend.

When people disagree with you, it might be better if you read what they say until you understand it.


Alternatively, carry on as you seem to always do.