Jojo Rabbit (2019) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  Taika Waititi

Starring: Roman Griffin Davis, Scarlett Johansson, Thomasin McKenzie, Sam Rockwell, Rebel Wilson

You laugh at the satirical early scenes of Jojo Rabbit so that you may not cry.   What's sad is that the Nazi regime actually recruited children to help carry out their despicable, deadly agenda.    The main character of Jojo Rabbit, a ten-year-old named Johannes (Davis) is ecstatic to be starting his first day of Hitler Youth training camp, and it takes a certain broken type of individual not to be appalled.  
What does one learn in Hitler Youth training camp?   Well, falsehoods about Jews and how to behave like a violent sociopath, just to name two items.   

Taika Waititi walks a delicate, delicate tightrope with Jojo Rabbit, which he wrote, directed, and co-starred as Jojo's imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler.   Yes, that one.   Waititi is fresh off directing Thor: Ragnarok, which made a boatload, so getting Jojo Rabbit greenlit was probably smoother than usual.    Imagine a first-time writer/director pitching a satirical view of Nazi Germany in which Adolf Hitler is the imaginary chum of the ten-year-old protagonist?    And Hitler is portrayed as an egomaniacal goof?   Good luck.

But, the movie was made and the results are a triumph of balance between the humorous, the sad, and the horrifying.    Jojo is all in on the lies spread about Jews.    He never met one, but surely he could recognize one because of the horns growing from their heads.     Jojo's mother, Rosie (Johansson) sees what is going on and finds it makes no sense.    People are dying and the war is soon to ravage their small, quiet, previously undisturbed town.   Her husband is off fighting in Italy and hasn't been heard from in months.   Soon, Jojo meets his first Jew, a teenage girl named Elsa (McKenzie) who he is terrified to discover hiding out in the bedroom of his dead sister.    Jojo is at first horrified and ready to contact the Gestapo, but realizes this will result in his mother being hauled away and shot.    Jojo and Elsa are frosty towards each other at first, then they develop a friendship which blows all of Jojo's previous beliefs completely out of the water.

Hitler pops in often, trying to compel Jojo to resist Elsa and continue obeying the laws of the Fatherland.    Hitler's impatience with Jojo grows with each visit, and finds even he can't stop Jojo from discovering his own humanity.    I won't reveal the payoff to Jojo's relationship with the imagined Hitler, but it is enormously satisfying and mostly inevitable.    The other adults in Jojo's life are hardly role models, although Capt. Klenzendorf (Rockwell), the inept leader of the local Hitler Youth chapter, does provide the depth we've come to expect from characters played by Sam Rockwell lately. 

Jojo Rabbit is as varied in tone as the emotions it dredges up within the viewer.   There is humor and satire, but we don't venture into Springtime for Hitler territory.    The themes dealt with are not taken lightly, and treated with the gravitas they deserve.    We are left with a powerful, unsettling movie experience.    The happy ending is a tad too happy, considering what has happened and how the two main characters are going to face their uncertain futures without any family to speak of.