Directing: B
Acting: A-
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

You’d think a movie marketed as an “anti-hate satire” would be more . . . satirical. What JoJo Rabbit is, rather, is—adorable. And it’s kind of hard to retain any satirical bite when you’re adorable.

Don’t get me wrong, though; adorable has a lot going for it. That’s why, even though this movie has divided critics, it also made the rounds of film festivals as a huge audience favorite, winning the audience award at the Toronto Film Festival. That’s an award that usually goes to an eventual Best Picture Oscar nominee, and has predicted the Best Picture winner half of the past ten years. Critical ambivalence combined with delighted audiences is often a recipe for Academy success.

Would JoJo Rabbit deserve any Oscars? I’d certainly hesitate to go that far. But then, I’d surely have said the same of Green Book, and I absolutely did say the same of The Shape of Water. I won’t deny that I was entertained my this movie, but I also feel a lot of the aforementioned ambivalence.

Maybe you won’t, though. Especially if you are interested in this film, and have little interest in the “wokeness” of the criticism—criticism I would argue is largely justified. JoJo Rabbit is part of an uncomfortable history of “feel-good” films about the Holocaust, which also somehow manage to dilute the truly grave realities of the Holocaust. And it’s a neat trick, allowing viewers to pat themselves on the back for empathizing with victims without ever truly considering the horrors they faced. with antisemitism (among other forms of bigotry) actually on the rise, is now the best time for a movie like this?

I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. I’m much more comfortable merely judging whether JoJo Rabbit works as a movie, and it does . . . kind of. As directed by tTaika Waititi (What We Do in the Shadows, Thor: Ragnarok), the tone is occasionally not quite well tuned. Curiously, the comic conceit of Hitler (played by Waititi himself) as the imaginary friend of 10-year-old JoJo is rarely as funny as intended. And yet, the more dramatic, human elements, this story of an indoctrinated boy’s mind being opened by the teenage Jewish girl being protected by his mother, generally work remarkably well.

And great performances go a long way. I’m tempted to say young Roman Griffin Davis as JoJo is worth seeing the movie all on his own. He’s not just almost unbearably adorable, but his performance is astonishing. His screen presence is the light that fuels everything that actually works in this movie. Scarlett Johansson is also wonderful as his politically subversive mother; Sam Rockwell is a bit of a hoot as a boozy soldier not especially passionate about Nazi ideals; even Rebel Wilson is fun Fraulein Rahm. Alfie Allen is a bit wasted as Sam Rockwell’s soldier sidekick, and young Archie Yates is a bit wooden as JoJo’s friend Yorki. This is Yates’s only credit on IMDb, though, and wooden or not, he’s still plenty adorable too. So, don’t tell him I said he was wooden. He’s got plenty of time to practice on other movies.

The thing is, a movie like JoJo Rabbit would retain far more power if released much sooner after World War II. One particular problem with it being released nearly eighty years later is how abstract that war now is to many viewers, and how this movie in many ways just turns it into a cartoon. I’m all for disarming with humor, but it’s hard to take power away from something so few people still have any active memory of to begin with. The end result is a film that doesn’t really take history seriously. JoJo Rabbit would have a lot more edge to it if it were set closer to now, replacing Adolph as JoJo’s imaginary friend with, say, Osama bin Laden. The point is, Waititi is totally playing it safe.

To be fair, and to give it some credit, JoJo Rabbit does go to some dark places. These moments are almost uniformly fleeting, however, lest the viewer be genuinely challenged in any way. And that’s what satire is supposed to be—it’s a type of challenge. This movie is not that at all. What it is, though, is fun. And adorable. And, more than anything, incredibly sweet. Its sweetness is truly irresistible, even when some of its oddball humor doesn’t quite land. Do we want to contemplate whether it should be sweet? Most critics seem to, while most audiences absolutely do not, and that’s their prerogative in either case.

Overall: B