LFF 2019: Jojo Rabbit

Got to be honest guys, Taika Waititi has never really set my world on fire. I like where he's coming from, and I enjoy most of his stuff (the best of it is still Flight Of The Conchords), but I've always felt that some of the jokes have been flubbed, or the storytelling has lacked a little complexity. Jojo Rabbit suffers from the same issues, but to a lesser extent, and while it's not flawless it is my favourite of Waititi's movies, and also the film I've enjoyed the most out of all the films I've seen at the London Film Festival so far (I have seen four).

It's the arse end of WWII and 10-year-old Johannes "Jojo" Betzler (Roman Griffin Davies, adorable) is a new recruit in the Hitler Youth. The cult of Hitler (compared smartly with Beatlemania under the title sequence) has indoctrinated Jojo so deeply that the Führer is his imaginary friend, played as an avuncular manchild by Waititi himself. Jojo's mum Rosie (Scarlett Johansson, adorable), however, is less keen on the whole genocide of the Jews thing, and when Jojo discovers that she's Anne Franked a 17-year-old girl (Thomasin McKenzie, adorable) inside their house, his tiny mind is addled by conflicting loyalties.

And that's it really: you can probably guess how it all ends up, so it's left to Waititi to spin his own brand of comedy out of what could, quite easily, be a straight-faced drama. It probably takes a good hour for his film to get to the point where it fulfils its potential, spending a lot of time expecting you to laugh at people like Rebel Wilson and Stephen Merchant simply because they are Rebel Wilson and Stephen Merchant. Fortunately Davies is engaging enough to carry the film without becoming annoying, and Johansson and McKenzie ground the drama while Sam Rockwell effortlessly provides the laughs in his few short scenes.

Waititi sets his film in a picture-postcard version of 1940s Germany, and characters talk in a decidedly 21st century vernacular for the most part. The obvious artifice renders the comedy fairly light and inoffensive, despite the claims that it's an "anti-hate satire"; there's not much in the way of satire going on, but there are still plenty of lols and a small amount of getting something in your eye to be had. It could do better at the whole "don't hate people just because they're different, you DICK" thing, and it could poke the "Nazis really are fucking idiots" hornets' nest a little more viciously, but Jojo Rabbit is well-intentioned and likeable enough to provide a solid 108 minutes' entertainment.

Cowboys And Aliens: What Can Possibly Go Wrong?

Don't you think next year's Cowboys And Aliens looks great? It stars:

Daniel "James Bond" Craig!

Harrison "Indiana Jones" Ford!

Sam "Various Forgettably Named But
Immensely Watchable Characters" Rockwell!

IMDb's plot keywords mention comics three times and aliens twice!

The comic it's based on features panels like this!

Well, forget all that. Cowboys And Aliens
is directed by Jon "Iron Man 2" Favreau.

It's going to be crapples. If you need proof, here's the FIRST OFFICIAL SET PHOTO!!!

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The Iron Man 2 Manifesto

Hi! I'm Iron Man. Of all the films coming up in the blockbuster season of 2010, I'm here to tell you why you should watch Iron Man 2 rather than anything else, with my 7-point Iron Manifesto:

1. I pledge to get rid of my friend Rhodey from the first film because he was too interesting and a bit fat. My new Rhodey will be a slimline version who can easily fit into one of my spare suits, will immediately know how to operate the suit even though it took me about an hour of screen time in the first film, and will be entirely devoid of character so as not to show me up.

2. In fact I pledge that all my fellow characters will be as weak as possible so that I'm the only one anybody remembers. I'll waste Mickey Rourke and Sam Rockwell as rubbish one-dimensional villains, I'll give Scarlett Johansson a figure-hugging suit and one fight scene but nothing else and I promise to use the mighty Samuel L Jackson to turn up, deliver expository dialogue and bugger off again.

3. Despite having the most technologically advanced and downright incredible suit ever made, I pledge to resort to punch-ups in most of my fight scenes. If I do suddenly reveal a very cool laser that you've never seen before as - inexplicably - a last resort, I pledge to explain why I don't just use it all the time by muttering something about how it can only be used once. I also promise not to bore you with why that's the case.

4. I pledge to introduce an irrelevant subplot about how that thing on my chest that keeps me alive is also killing me, and furthermore I pledge to solve this problem with a further pointless subplot about my Dad which will be one of the most ridiculous contrivances in modern cinema.

5. Remember that cute scene from the trailer where Pepper Potts kisses my helmet (fnerk) and I jump out of a plane saying "you complete me"? Well I pledge not to include that in the film. I do, however, pledge to kiss her in a scene that is supposed to carry some emotional weight but is in fact about as emotionally charged as a tin can kissing a stick can be.

6. I pledge to include an obligatory final scene after the credits that means nothing to anyone except the most hardcore Marvel Comics fan.

7. Finally, I pledge to do absolutely nothing for the superhero genre, despite recent envelope-pushers like The Dark Knight and Kick-Ass, and I promise to do it with as vague a story and script as possible so as not to confuse the kiddlywinks.

So that's the Iron Man 2 Manifesto. I hope you'll choose my film as the one to spend a tenner on because we need all the cash we can to parp out another one of these in a couple of years.

Thanks!
Iron Man
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