Jojo Rabbit Review: 7 Ups & 2 Downs

Downs...

2. The Slightly Underwhelming Humour

Jojo Rabbit is a consistently funny film, make no mistake, but it's definitely a tad disappointing that Waititi's humour fires quite so broadly for the most part.

Perhaps the filmmaker felt the need to do this to avoid alienating more general audiences entirely, but the result is a film that picks the easy joke a few times too many.

Jojo Rabbit is at its most effective as an absurdist character piece about a young German boy, Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), coming to terms with the horrors of the Nazi ideology, as best expressed through Waititi's own caricature of Adolf Hitler.

But if you were expecting something as clever and hilarious as, say, What We Do in the Shadows, there are a lot less jokes that land with quite that level of hysterical impact.

Many will see it as a fair concession, to play the gags more silly and OTT to prevent the movie from feeling like a total bummer, but given Waititi's clear intelligence as an artist, his film does feel a bit too restrained in this department.