The Leader, (Film Review) Jojo Rabit, “self-questioning triggers the start of a gradual turn toward the sinister in his imaginary friend version of Der Führer”

“Jojo Rabbit” is one of the most gravity-defying hybrids of dark comedy and earnest pathos I’ve seen since Mel Brooks was in his prime.

Writer-director Taika Waititi adapted Christine Leunens’ satirical 2004 novel “Caging Skies,” but the result feels like the 1984 Henry Thomas and Dabney Coleman film “Cloak & Dagger,” cross-pollinated with Spire Comics’ 1973 “Hansi, the Girl Who Loved the Swastika.”

Johannes “Jojo” Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis) is a 10-year-old Hitler Youth living with his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) in Germany, near enough to the end of of World War II that even the German people are starting to suspect that the Nazis’ days of glory are done, and while he isn’t entirely friendless, Jojo’s best friend is an imaginary version of Adolf Hitler (played by Waititi himself).

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