Jojo Rabbit
A story about a ten year old boy in Nazi Germany sounds like one of those made-for-school dramas from the 1980s, but Taika Waititi —the New Zealand director with the vivid imagination and quirky humour—has come up with a sharp satire about Naziism which is unexpectedly tender and ultimately powerful and moving. Sneaking this in behind the trope of Hitler as an imaginary friend undersells the premise and promises some sort of broad comedy along the lines of Mel Brooks movies or—at a push— ’Allo ’Allo. But this isn’t either of those. The boy Jojo ( Roman Griffin Davis ) is weak, but in the Hitler Youth he finds that those around him will accept him if he joins in with their ideological hatred of anything that’s not Aryan. This sounds like it’s toeing some sort of tasteless lines but the anti-Semitic slurs on Judaism stick to the laughably preposterous and steer clear of the material that’s regrettably become topical again. Taika Waititi himself plays Adolph: he’s out in th...