Jojo Rabbit

This is about as wacky and off-beat as they go

Dictating the terms of a brand-new comedy sub-genre, Taika Waititi has pushed the boat out so far it’s little more than a smudge on the horizon.

How do you make a cuddly Nazi satire, featuring Adolf as our Hitlerjugend protagonist’s imaginary best friend, that is neither derivative, dismissive nor defective? For a start, you could try continually re-writing it for 12 years, wait for the political climate to be ripe to mock tyrannical autocrats, direct a kick ass Marvel instalment that develops a cult following and when no actor will take up the gauntlet of playing the tiny-‘tashed monster, you don the mantel yourself.

Taika (Hunt for the Wilderpeople,Eagle vs Shark), who also wrote and directed, will take you from the ludicrous anarchic heights of a swimming cap clad Adolf doggy paddling against a backdrop of drowning Hitler Youth to scenes of pure, unfiltered grief at the snap of his fingers. He will then hit you with scenes of unbridled terror only to swing back again to nutty surrealism with Adolf carving the head of a unicorn. A fascist for detail, he achieves it all with a dexterity so masterful, that when all’s said and done, you will look back on it incredulously, wondering how he managed to make this meticulous and poignant gem out of one of the craziest concepts every to be housed by cinema.

At its heart, the tale is about our eponymous Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) as he develops an unlikely friendship with Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), a Jewish stowaway who has been hiding in his walls. But there are also rocket launchers, cardboard robots, Sam Rockwell as a punk, mascaraed Wehrmacht Captain with a drinking problem, oh and an excellent German cover of David Bowie.

This is about as wacky and off-beat as they go; a Grimm’s fairy-tale tale of grim goings on in National Socialist Germany with a fantastical bent, heart-felt moments and one incredibly badly aimed hand grenade.