Ayden The NinjaPirateBear’s review published on Letterboxd:
2019 Ranked
Non-2020 First Time Watches Ranked
Directors Ranked: Taika Waititi
When Taika gets to write his own films, he has this knack of being able to blend two dramatically different tones and just seemingly making it work. Jojo Rabbit is no different.
There are truly hilarious scenes. There are dramatic scenes. There are tense scenes. Yet it never feels jarring. There are not many directors that could pull it off like Taika does again and again.
One thing that really stood out to me, and I'll be vague because spoilers, but Taika focuses on a certain item of clothing throughout the film and that plays into a very emotional scene later in the film. It's a clever way of doing it because when you see it at the later end of the film, you know exactly what has happened.
All of the performances in this are fantastic, yes, even Rebel Wilson who may be the least funny person working in Hollywood today. Of course Taika was great, as was Scarlett and Sam Rockwell, my favourite of the minor cast. However it was the (or even three) newcomers, Roman Griffin Davis who plays the titular Jojo, Thomasin McKenzie who plays Elsa, and then to a lesser extent Archie Yates, who plays Jojo's friend Yorki, that stole the show here. Seriously, the former two are the actual leads of this film and they carry it. It was incredibly impressive and they both have huge futures ahead of them.
Overall, I think Taika has hit it out of the park again. This was excellent.
