Such gambles are worth taking even if you believe the gambler is headed for the breadline. Taika Waititi’s most daring film isn’t his most successful. Waititi’s World War II satire is both a magic trick and a high-wire act – the filmmaker keeps pulling rabbits out of his hat while balancing comedy, kindness, and often shocking darkness. Strikes just the right balance between comedy, tragedy, and drama, the result being a very funny WWII film that nevertheless carries an incredibly important message about the here and now. Let me add something in the movie’s favor. But hate can be both worthy of ridicule and deadly serious, and for the most part Jojo Rabbit manages to thread that needle. It’s oddly safe, given the subject matter, and the humour is similarly sanitised. But if you’re looking for giddy escapism, Bowie tunes and an unapologetic good time with a side order of remembrance for of WW2, then you’ll have as much fun as the cast clearly had making this. Jojo Rabbit, a very nice but thin crowd-pleaser about love conquering all, bills itself as an “anti-hate satire.” But true satire challenges and provokes.

Erratic but engaging, going in and out of daring, the film’s mixture of black humor and unashamed sentimentality is not always as good as its best parts. But the adaptation isn’t funny enough to sustain the style, which owes an overt debt to Mel Brooks and amounts to Springtime for Hitler Youth.

Call it a noble failure. Yes, the tone is a tricky balance that sometimes almost gets away from Waititi — there are some laugh-out-loud moments alongside some scenes of harrowing sadness. This “Rabbit” is maybe just a little too cute, and a little too friendly. Though it dabbles with the horror of the Third Reich it never examines their worst atrocities ... And that perhaps, is too careless in today’s world of a rising far right and stealth dictatorships. In the early going, though, Waititi manages to keep the tone light and the humor surreal enough to avoid too much association with the real world. The film doesn’t lack for audacity, or ultimate purpose — it’s against hate and in favor of love. ... Rather than being bracing or dangerous, this comedy ends up feeling a little too safe, a little too scattered, and a little too inconsequential. But among the tonal clashes there’s real hope, humanity, and no-bones-about-it Nazi-bashing at a time when that’s depressingly necessary. “Jojo,” despite going to some very dark places for its laughs, is no exception. Jojo Rabbit doesn’t lack for ambition or sincerity of purpose — which only makes it more disappointing that the film proves to be so meagre.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Nothing in this film feels gratuitous and the tonal shift in the film will hit you like a ton of bricks. Jojo Rabbit’s script isn’t emotionally complex enough to address the cruel realism of its world, and as the bleakness continues, the jokes fall flatter and flatter. There are no insights to be had – and no laughs. Taika Waititi’s self-proclaimed “anti-hate satire” “Jojo Rabbit” exists in service of a single idea, a notion so desperately idealistic that it lands somewhere between naïveté and disingenuousness. A twisted piece of grandly entertaining provocation. The problem with Waititi’s approach, not unlike those faced by Roberto Benigni 22 years ago when he made the divisive "Life Is Beautiful," is perfecting the tonal shifts. It will find an audience that gets it.

Even though the target of satire in Jojo Rabbit is clearly the Nazis, the movie sharply but unintentionally satirizes itself, as well as its makers and the movie industry at large that saw fit to produce, release, and acclaim it. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry — sometimes at the same time. Taika Watiti takes a big, wild swing with 'Jojo Rabbit' — an audacious slice of Third Reich whimsy that almost definitely shouldn’t work as well as it does. What Waititi thinks is shockingly audacious is in fact frustratingly timid, he opts for a gentle prod when maybe a punch would do. It's set amid one of the most horrific periods of world history, but the gas chambers and concentration camps are nowhere to be seen. This is either the worst time for a movie like Jojo Rabbit or the best time. But the film only works because it manages to nail its balance of tones. But for the most part, Waititi and the cast, which is uniformly excellent, manage to make it work. Jojo Rabbit isn’t perfect; sometimes it strains to reconcile Waititi’s more relaxed beats (“Let everything happen to you,” is a line from poet Rainer Maria Rilke that gets big play) with his visual fussiness.

At the end of Jojo Rabbit, you’re just left wondering what the point of it all was. It’s far from the disaster it could have been given the tonal tightrope it walks, but it’s also closer to a misfire than we all hoped it would be.

Believe it or not, the “Hitler Comedy” plays it too safe. Its so-called audacity smacks of calculation and emotional cowardice. But as his story devolves into melodrama, the comedy curdles. It will find an audience that gets it.