What in the actual sh*t is this?! Actually, let me start in a different way, with some prefaces. First, I was REALLY looking forward to this film. A smart, original satire about a Nazi youth with Hitler as his imaginary friend discovering a Jewish girl hidden in his attic?! Oh Jeez! Sign me up! This film had all the components to be genius, instead it was garbage. Second, in no way am I clutching my pearls at the thematic elements of this film or taking some sort of self-righteous moral high ground, it’s gutsy and I thought it was going to be great. It was not. Taika Waititi produced, wrote, directed AND played Hitler in this confusing mess of a movie. He’s not really talented enough in any one role to pull off the challenges of making a movie like this great, and he fails miserably at all four. Critics have wanted to call this satire, but is it? Where’s the satire? This film could have been played straight to heartbreaking appeal, or it could have been played for comic effect if Waititi had committed to that, but there’s an indecisiveness that murders this film throughout. Hitler needed to EITHER be an endearing imaginary friend OR a comic force, but instead he’s a bad clown and an annoyance, as if Waititi doesn’t really want to commit to the character, there’s a sense that he’s a frame short of winking at the camera. Like Meryl Streep’s atrocious singing in Florence Foster Jenkins, James Franco’s madness in The Disaster Artist, or Robert Downey, Jr’s absurdity in blackface in Tropic Thunder, these roles require perfect commitment to be funny and endearing, Waititi fails miserably. It’s a shame too, as the first half of the film, one thinks one may be watching a coming-of-age Nazi Moonlight Kingdom with a Grand Budapest Hotel aesthetic, maybe not all that funny or living up to its promise, but enjoyable at least. A sharp and gruesome turn mid-film makes the plot irredeemable and the viewer left hanging, like Scarlett Johannsen in the film, just hoping the war will end. Johannsen turns in a surprisingly warm and affecting performance and Sam Rockwell is as good as he can be as a Nazi Captain who laments how his career has ended up chasing around after Hitler’s youth, Rockwell may have been feeling the same. Roman Griffin Davis carries the film adequately as Jojo, but Thomasin McKenzie’s Jewish girl Elsa has a hardness that plays as mean, nottough, and ultimately unsympathetic; this is likely the fault of direction. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a truly original and remarkable film and Waititi squanders the chance horribly with his own hubris. Don’t see it.