The tag-line of this film is "The bastard love child of Chaplin's Great Dictator & Mel Brooks' The Producers". This is about right, although I think it's much closer to Brooks than Chaplin (and anyhow, the Chaplin film is not one of his best, aside from the iconic scene of the Hitlerian dictator bouncing an earth-like beach ball around the office).
It is a very weird, small comedy about a Jewish acting teacher who is hired by the Nazis to coach Hitler in preparation for a major speech he is giving in 1945. As the Nazi forces begin to lose in post-D-Day Europe, Hitler gets more and more depressed until he finally loses his speaking mojo. Goebbles, knowing the Fuhrer needs to address his people in order to restore some pride and joy in the country, takes Adolf Grunbaum out of the concentration camp and gets him to work with Hitler on his public delivery. Grunbaum is, of course, faced with the moral dilemma of helping his people's greatest enemy, but is taken in by Hitler's kindness to him and his almost pitiful innocence. He leverages his work to get his family our of the camps as well, but then faces pressure from them to take action to kill the dictator.
The tone of the movie is very strange. It's a very silly, over-the-top comedy that has some very sad, touching moments in it as well. Hitler is portrayed as a bumbling fool and an almost childlike relationship to the world. His high command keep information from him and spy through holes in paintings around the office wall. It is in fact a very Brooksian view of the guy - really he's just a punching bag, and we mostly laugh because we can laugh at him, rather than because his actions are necessarily funny or clever.
It is never clear that this story is either historical or fantasy - it doesn't go nearly as far as Inglorious Basterds in showing that it's all a big fake joke, but it also doesn't totally seem all that serious. Writer/director Dani Levy, a Jewish man from Switzerland, seems to be mostly retaliating over a grudge (OK, a grudge is not really what it is), more than giving us any real incisive critique or comedic piece.
Grunbaum is played by Ulrich Mühe (who beautifully played the Stasi agent from The Lives of Others a few years ago). He is very good, as are most of the other actors. But they are somewhat left out flapping in the wind with the film lacking much of a story. I didn't really feel there was anything for them to grab onto thematically or tonally throughout. Are all the characters other than Hitler supposed to be straight men and the whole thing is some massive joke (that goes rather above my head)? Are these great dramatic performances or comedic ones? This is mostly a silly and small movie - two adjectives that don't fit well naturally in connection to the Holocaust. I don't think it's terribly successful or insightful.
Stars: 1.5 of 4
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