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Post by alexanderblanchett on Dec 29, 2019 14:09:40 GMT
It was a very refreshing take on a nazi war film. Definitely risky and a lot so balls involved to make the satire work and not backfiring. Taika Waitti had those balls and went even further than you would actually have expected. Its the kind of film you can do now but couldn't haven been done even 5 years ago. What I liked most of it that it works during both phases, the comedic ones but also the dramatic ones. There are many shifts of emotions involved and it never feels over the place but exactly giving the audience a mixture of different moods. Acting is great. Roman Griffin Davis is absolutely THE discovery of the year. What an awesome performance for a young first timer. Very intense, funny and absolutely on the note. Excellent job and I am really looking forward to his next films. Thomasin McKenzie was also very good and proved herself as the perfect choice for the role. Sam Rockwell was perfectly cast and played that role with a lot of self irony but also heart. Rebel Wilson was really on fire here and also well chosen for the role she played. Of course there was Archie Yates who just like Davis is a great discovery and played wonderfully. Scarlett Johansson had many strong moments and is absolutely deserving every kind of love she is getting this year. She could have played that mother role pretty standard but she realy added a lot to it. Last but certainly not least there was Taika Waitti himself in the role of Hitler - well imaginary Hitler. Also such a on-the point performance with so much right irony. A film that worked but could have easily failed. Its one of the most heart warming, funny but also sad films of the year.
Current nominations for:
Best Picture Best Actor in a Leading Role: Roman Griffin Davis Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Thomasin McKenzie Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Scarlett Johansson Best Adapted Screenplay* Best Production Design Best Ensemble
Rating: 9/10
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Dec 30, 2019 1:50:53 GMT
"You guys, I have this insane hot-take: The Holocaust wouldn't have happened if all the Jews were pretty teenage girls and all the Nazis were lonely 10 year-old boys" - Taika Waititi, reportedly
Yeah, this was a shitshow. Individual elements work (Johansson is delightful, Rockwell is fun, costumes and sets are solid) but they're all in service of a terminally cancer-ridden concept. One of the most unabashedly naive films I've seen. A Life Is Beautiful reskin as brought to you by Wes Anderson. There wasn't a single moment when it didn't feel weird or wrongheaded or toothless.
"You guys, Nazis are pretty lame." - also Taika Waititi, allegedly.
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Post by bob-coppola on Dec 30, 2019 2:19:25 GMT
I really, really loved this movie. It's funny, but so much more than that. It's moving, tender, beautiful. I appreciate the comedy, but it's so sweet that its heart stays with the viewer above all things. i get that its argument on "nazis are bad, love is love" isn't really Hannah Arendt, but I don't think it should be judged as something it doesn't even try to be. It's a Taika Waititi movie at its finest, in the same vein as his best past work.
This movie is funny, heartwarming, life-affirming, charming... The cast is great. The kid is a revelation, and Scarjo is great as well. But MVP is surely Thomasin McKenzie. The only "complaint" I have is that Waititi's Hitler, even if well-written and purposeful for the plot, feels sometimes like a shortcut to Jojo's internal struggle and maybe those could've been portrayed in a more elegant way? but I think the movie would lose some of its childlike* innocence that way, so I don't know.
* I think these childlike lens through which both this movie and Life Is Beautiful are seen is an element that often gets lost or ignored in discussion. I think it's so elementary for JJR that it's a story as seen by a kid, so why would it have to be a darker, more cerebral take on the roots of evil?
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Javi
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Post by Javi on Dec 30, 2019 19:38:24 GMT
Wtf did I just watch??? At a time when movies have become "offensive" for all sorts of questionable reasons, how exactly is this thing not being shredded to bits? I was expecting a saccharine, maybe somewhat misguided children's movie but not this level of puerile vulgarity coming at you from all fronts. This crap makes you long for the good old days of Roberto Benigni. The director seems to be working under the illusion that he's parodying something, then under a second illusion that he's making some kind of humanist statement. His only achievement as far as I can tell is exposing the spine-chilling infantilism of his ideas and that he probably failed every History test growing up... and that is if we're being kind, because this movie could easily pass for the worst kind of cynicism. His conception of the world: Life = Children = Good vs. Death Cult = Nazis = Bad. But wait, because Nazis aren't actually bad, in fact actual Nazis probably didn't exist whatsoever, that's just a mask they wear to hide their weakness! And what kind of writer wouldn't think using a pantomime Hitler masquerading as a father figure isn't a hilariously cute idea? Fetid pic all around... the worst instincts of indie filmmaking and New Age sensibilities working together. It's insincere to a fault. Even Death has W-H-I-M-S-Y written all over it, wouldn't ya know? Gotta love the ending with the surviving happy Germans going around their business like WWII never happened... but I guess minor atrocities like the Dresden bombing aren't compatible with the director's moronic POV. 1.5/10 and it isn't lower only because Johansson manages to pretend she's in an actual movie for a while.
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erickeitel
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Post by erickeitel on Dec 31, 2019 3:21:35 GMT
I'm baffled that I'm in the middle and didn't love or hate it. I thought I'd be more towards the latter, but it was just... nothing?
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Post by Pittsnogle_Goggins on Jan 1, 2020 4:38:42 GMT
Well put me in the camp of really liking this.
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Post by pessimusreincarnated on Jan 4, 2020 6:19:36 GMT
A really enjoyable film overall that benefits from a top-notch ensemble cast. Waititi continues to prove he's an excellent director of young talent- newcomer Roman Griffin Davis knocks it out of the park, and McKenzie is quietly wonderful. But the film's secret weapon is Scarlett Johansson, who plays one of the all-time great movie moms with heartbreaking and joyous fervor. She was highkey better in this than Marriage Story and I'd looooove to see her win supporting actress, though at this point I'm fearful she may miss a nomination outright.
I'm kind of confused by the people who are blatantly hating this film, like is it really that offensive to you? The movie is quite clearly a satire taking place in a heightened reality, being told from the perspective of a misguided Nazi youth. Not much of it is supposed to be taken at face value...which does present a bit of a problem in and of itself, in terms of tone. I wouldn't go so far as to call this film tone-deaf though, as most of the dramatic detours coalesce quite well with the zany nature of the rest of it (that shoe scene...fuck).
I'd give it around a 7 or a 7.5. It's not Waititi's most finely-tuned or consistent offering by any means, but it's certainly his most ambitious and heartfelt.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jan 4, 2020 6:53:10 GMT
you know what's a better film about fascism and just as whimsical? The Grand Budapest Hotel.
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Post by Tommen_Saperstein on Jan 4, 2020 7:40:53 GMT
I want to elaborate because my first take was pretty flippant.
My problem with this movie was how it presents a bipolar universe with a hopeful message, operating in a heightened reality in which genocide exists concurrently with childish fancy and Stephen King bullies (it's from a child's POV so of course it has that, but for the film to work the viewer must take this world at face value and forget everything they learned in history class), and takes this universe and spins a life-affirming message about...I don't know...love, I guess. For a satire about the Nazis the film comes off as awfully toothless. They marketed it as an "anti-hate" satire but its observations about learned hate are obvious, and yeah reductionist (offensively so in this context) when paired with coming of age themes about the need to belong. Waititi packages his film about Nazis and Jewish persecution with the sensibilities of a Disney movie and does so with 100% earnestness, and approach ripe for parody because that's not how the real world works. I wonder if the film had been about a different topic (say the rape of Nanking, or anything involving rape) if people would still be giving it the time of day. If the satire runs as deep as love vs. hate than you could apply it to literally anything. This non-specifity conversely protects the film and makes it consumable, because it risks nothing and makes no topical statements that couldn't have been delivered in any other coming of age dramedy employing allusion (Zootopia was more relevant than this film). Centering it on the Third Reich is also safe because Hitler has been satirized to death to the point that we're just kicking a dead horse at this point. The movie was meant to satirize hate but it isn't going to offend the kind of hateful people that still exist and are running this country into the ground--its lampoons so broad that it might as well target nothing.
All of this is emphasized by the fact that the film is weirdly vague about where it draws the line (that is, besides the line between love and hate which is about as thematically vague as you can possibly be), and this is embodied by the Rockwell character with his inexplicable redemption arc. Jojo learns not to be an evil little bigot because he gets to know Elsa (so basically Green Book again, because the minority who could be killed any second has to teach an ignorant person how to be human), but that doesn't explain how Captain Klenzendorf approaches that same conclusion. I guess there are good Nazis too? Is it because he's gay? How does that track?
Unlike a better satire (Death of Stalin for example, which managed to poke fun at the buffoonery of Stalin's inner circle without underselling their capacity for monstrous cruelty or ending on a sellout crowdpleasing ending), Jojo has the naieve audacity to offer an infantile solution to very real grownup problems. I don't think film is going to age well at all. It's crowdpleasing in the way that Life Is Beautiful was crowdpleasing (although it might be even worse). Once the initial sheen wears off its fatuousness will become more and more apparent. Thirty years from now this will be remembered as the Wes Anderson knockoff that appropriated the Holocaust for a few cheap laughs.
The reason this bothered me so much is that the proposition that something like the Holocaust could have a Disney happy ending even in fantasy is simply wrong, and it felt really, really weird to see a film existing in a realm where both those things exist at face value side by side and propelled by the narrative device of having racism be untaught by a good-natured minority. Even Grand Budapest Hotel, for all its charm and whimsy, understood that these things cancel each other out and sometimes the wrong side wins.
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Post by TerryMontana on Jan 7, 2020 18:06:21 GMT
Well, I liked this!!
Its biggest advantage imo was it didn't take itself very seriously!! Heartwarming and enjoyable little film. It had some pretty funny moments but not many, which was a good thing. There were some scenes in which they tried too hard to be funny and failed. I mean, really failed. Thankfully, they were very few.
Script was a little over the top at times but overall I had a good time. After all, it was just a satire. You can take it or leave it, but it was nothing more than that. Not a comedy, not a drama, just a satire.
ScarJo and Rockwell were very good but not Oscar-worthy. The movie will most likely get a BP nod and that's all it deserves.
7/10
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Post by ibbi on Jan 9, 2020 13:57:35 GMT
I thought it was very tonally inconsistent, and never really came together. Some great comic stuff, some great dramatic stuff, but it never meshed the way something like Hunt for the Wilderpeople did.
I think the cast (particularly all of the ones not being nominated for awards) were really good. The two little boys were AWESOME, Thomasin is still awesome, Merchant is always awesome, Rebel Wilson was perfectly cast, and Alfie Allen perfectly wasted.
I think Taika is one of the best comic actors on the planet, and he was probably the one thing here where the comedy and drama really blended well - those scenes where he tips into the Hitler speeches in particular.
I thought Sam Rockwell's arc really worked particularly because he has the strain of self loathing there the whole way, so the ending actually makes sense unlike in that comical piece of shit he won his Oscar for.
I LOVED that cigarette offering gag, I think it was one of the few indirect, not entirely on the nose things in the entire movie, something out of one of his better films (this is comfortably my least favourite of the ones I've seen).
The first and (particularly) last needle drops were also outstanding, it's just a shame the inconsistency of what came in between didn't live up to it.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 13, 2020 20:29:56 GMT
Well, this was somehow worse than Joker. What a repulsively stupid, embarrassingly misguided (the Nazis were bad because they're SO DUMB, GUYS, ha ha! The Jews just needed to convince those silly idiots that they were also human beings who didn't deserve to be murdered!), and relentlessly obnoxious movie. Another 2/10, good god.
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Post by Ryan_MYeah on Jan 13, 2020 20:47:21 GMT
Hot take: McKenzie > Johansson.
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Post by JangoB on Jan 13, 2020 20:58:42 GMT
Hot take: McKenzie > Johansson. The right take, I'd say.
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Post by mrimpossible on Jan 14, 2020 21:00:06 GMT
I actually went into this movie kind of excited. People were calling it bold, funny and fresh take on WW2. I came out of the theater getting the opposite of that. Most jokes just didn't land and were cheesy. Things that were suppose to come off as edgy were all cringe inducing. I gotta say everyone aside from Roman Griffin Davis and Thomasin McKenzie were awful. Scarjo was just plain bad and unconvincing. Taika Wattiti should be banned from acting for a couple years, he was horrid. The moments you were supposed to feel emotions made no impact on me. It's a movie that's bad at doing its job which is suppose to emotionally manipulate you. I was ready to be emotionally manipulated. I was ready to laugh, cry and cheer. But I wasn't! What a disappointment.
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spiralstatic
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Maybe you're like Dangermouse: small, but mighty... ? ??!?!?!
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Post by spiralstatic on Jan 20, 2020 11:03:02 GMT
you know what's a better film about fascism and just as whimsical? The Grand Budapest Hotel. Yep. I saw Jojo at LFF, so a while ago now (October), but as someone who really, REALLY loved Taika's previous work, I was excited. I was SO disappointed. Which is not to say I totally hated the film. I just thought it had basically one joke which was absolutely 0% funny. I did not laugh once (& it just isn't funny, is it!! I mean.) Though I will say, at a film festival it was a big audience and people did laugh. (as I thought - why are you laughing? I find it fascinating in big audiences how much people want to laugh and seem to just be seeking anything remotely possible to laugh at.) I just found it... fine... mostly. I'm not gonna say I hated it. It just wasn't funny, was banal, trivial and stupid, but I quite liked the ending at least. Yes, it was manipulative, but I could be manipulated by it and I wasn't hating the ending like I was the rest of the film. And I'd much rather have a film I hate with a good ending than one I love with an awful one. (Is that weird of me.) I can't UNDERSTAND how it is up for Oscars though. I mean. Did anyone who voted even watch it!!?!?!?!??!?!!!!
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The-Havok
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Post by The-Havok on Jan 25, 2020 6:07:34 GMT
I actually thought it was alright. Pretty human take on Nazi Germany and the performances were top notch, even with Johansson in one of the saddest scenes of the movie.
Jokes were hit on miss. Comedy should have been more consistent but damn some of the stuff was genuinely hilarious (Jojo's book stuff and the depiction of jews had me rolling). Direction was so inconsistent in tone though. I'm not sure if I was supposed to laugh or feel like in joy in some of the scenes at the end especially.
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Post by Pavan on Jan 31, 2020 12:05:12 GMT
Had the audacity to turn a serious subject into a lighthearted and uplifting film. The cast did a pretty good job but i'm a bit surprised Scarlett got an Oscar nom for this. She's good but definitely not worthy of a nom. Thomasin McKenzie was better but she was overlooked. Thought Waititi didn't had much to say beyond a certain point and continued playing the cute factor with irreverent humor sprinkled all over. That said i enjoyed it more than i thought i would- 7/10
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avnermoriarti
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Post by avnermoriarti on Jan 31, 2020 17:37:06 GMT
When a movie creates a bubble like "it's all a dream" or "it's seen through the eyes of a kid" barely works imo, becomes a limited experience, but even within that notion, Jojo Rabbit fells flat on its face because underestimate the imagination of children, from the work of Victor Erice to Guillemo del Toro, or what ? only spaniard kids in franco / post-franco era can comprehend and notice more things than adults ?
I think there was a lot of "obvios" respect for the material and prove that you can make "jokes" nowadays and for that reason its two identities ( straight up drama and comedy ) never mesh together. I thought Rebel Wilson got away with every line she said, Stephen Merchant and Sam Rockwell as well but overall it's bland, vanilla, safe, dumb material all around, with little things here and there.
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Post by DeepArcher on Feb 8, 2020 23:22:44 GMT
So I finally saw this today (a take everyone has been dying to hear, I'm sure) and, uh, yeah, it's a totally misguided mess that seldom if ever worked for me that couldn't decide if it wanted to be a "satirical" comedy or a serious drama and desperately tried to have the best of both worlds by poorly weaving its way between the two movies it wanted to be from start to end and ultimately failed at being anything meaningful on any front. It's a movie about a 10-year-old that feels like it was written by one, too, as a film that has a well-intentioned message, but it preaches it directly at you while also being totally inept with its narrative structure and tonal presentation, having a childlike grasp on some sort of "everyone is good deep down" morality, and is just horribly unfunny. It really feels like Waititi's sense of humor was corrupted by the MCU or something, because this is such a mind-bogglingly far cry from (the genuinely hilarious) What We Do in the Shadows, substituting that incredibly effective brand of comedy for the most basic, predictable comedic beats imaginable that truly felt reminiscent of the bad, forced humor you find in a tentpole blockbuster. The Stephan Merchant scene made me laugh, mostly because it's Stephen Merchant, but I was practically dead quiet the entire rest of the movie. (Didn't help that one or two guys in my audience definitely found it too funny!)
Some of its dramatic beats were a bit more effective, but it still can't get away with its weird indecisiveness about the nature of Jojo's and Elsa's relationship, or the whole "hey, Nazis can be good too!" thing it does with the Rockwell character, or the fact that it literally just uses the Johansson character as a surrogate to directly preach its very basic themes about love or whatever, or just the general fact that it never once takes Nazism or the monstrously hateful ideas they perpetuated seriously when a great deal of the story demands that it does so. I mean, I'm all for removing the power of the iconography of these figures, but Jojo Rabbit just does not feel like the right way to do it.
And to comment a bit on the acting because that's what you nerds care about: Merchant was the one person who seemed interested in showing up and being funny. Rockwell brought some nice verve to a character whose concept felt questionable at best. McKenzie got much better after acting like a total psychopath in her first couple scenes for no apparent reason, and her character in general was one of the better things about the film. Um, Archie Yates is cute and all but, I'm sorry, he's a horrendous actor who can't deliver a line naturally to save his life, and Roman Griffin Davis was not much better. Rebel Wilson was genuinely hard to watch. And, uh ... I think that's everyone!
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Post by DeepArcher on Feb 8, 2020 23:47:03 GMT
I will say that I liked this much, much more than when it was called Life is Beautiful. So that's, progress, I guess?
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Post by notacrook on Feb 9, 2020 4:58:12 GMT
And, uh ... I think that's everyone!
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Drish
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Post by Drish on Feb 9, 2020 5:20:10 GMT
"Archie Yates is cute and all but, I'm sorry, he's a horrendous actor who can't deliver a line naturally to save his life" I feel so offended @deeparcher
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Post by TerryMontana on Feb 9, 2020 14:17:56 GMT
is cute and all but, I'm sorry, he's a horrendous actor who can't deliver a line naturally to save his life Exactly my thoughts for Taika Waititi...
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Post by DeepArcher on Feb 9, 2020 17:32:16 GMT
"Archie Yates is cute and all but, I'm sorry, he's a horrendous actor who can't deliver a line naturally to save his life" I feel so offended @deeparcher I'm sorry! He's a cute kid and I'd like to see him develop as an actor more!
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