Jojo Rabbit Review: 7 Ups & 2 Downs

4. It Nails Its Tricky Tonal Shifts

By its sheer nature, Jojo Rabbit is a film which pinballs between a number of distinct tones and moods, and it takes a filmmaker of incredible skill to pull these shifts off without jarring the audience in an unpleasant way.

To his enormous credit, Waititi does so masterfully, exploring the interplay between light and dark in a manner that, for the most part, feels totally natural.

The only time where the tones clash is when Waititi wants them to: one especially shocking moment late in the film grinds things to a halt in the most stunningly effective way, and the resulting dropped jaws are surely exactly what the filmmaker desired.

And while it perhaps would've benefited the film to linger on these grim moments a little longer before firing up the next gag, given how easily this could've been a tonal car crash of a movie, the end result is staggeringly cohesive all the same.