The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Headline: ** Hopeless **
Title: THE BOY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS
Quality: * * * Acceptability: -1
SUBTITLES: None
WARNING CODES:
Language: L
Violence: V
Sex: S
Nudity: N
RATING: PG-13
RELEASE: November 7, 2008
TIME: 93 minutes
STARRING: Asa Butterfield, Jack Scanlon, David Thewlis, Vera Farmiga, Amber Beattie, Richard Johnson, Sheila Hancock, Rupert Friend, David Hayman, Jim Norton, and Cara Horgan
DIRECTOR: Mark Herman
PRODUCER: David Heyman
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Mark Herman and Christine Langan
WRITER: Mark Herman
BASED ON THE NOVEL BY: John Boyne
DISTRIBUTOR: Miramax Films/The Walt Disney Company
CONTENT: (BB, C, L, V, S, N, A, D, M) Strong moral worldview in a pronounced morality story, with the message that evil destroys itself, where Nazi concentration camp commandant loses his son to the evil system he helped establish with some Christian prayers and a funeral but they are made by or focus on the NAZI villains; one light profanity and comments saying "dirty Jew" and other anti-Semitic slurs; off-screen violence with intense sounds of beating a Jewish servant and showing the impact of a beaten Jewish boy, skinned knee, and a gas chamber scene with cyanide pellets being dropped on naked men and boys, then sounds of people trying to get out of the gas chamber; no sexual behavior, although a few light references; upper male nudity from the back; alcohol use; smoking; and, lying, deception, propaganda movie about concentration camps, and betrayal.
GENRE: Drama
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Teenagers and adults
Please address your comments to:
Daniel Battsek, President
Miramax Films
(A Division of The Walt Disney Company)
375 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10013
Phone: (323) 822-4100 and (917) 606-5500
Fax: (323) 822-4216
Website: www.miramax.com
SUMMARY: THE BOY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS is about a German boy during World War II who becomes best friends with a young Jewish boy in a concentration camp. Although the acting and production quality are good, the story is too slow, too preachy and too clear about the points it tries to make.
IN BRIEF:
THE BOY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS is about a German boy during World War II whose father runs one of the concentration camps for Jews. The boy, Bruno, befriends a Jewish boy, Shmuel, in the camp. They become friends, with Bruno stealing food from the kitchen to help the boy. Eventually, Bruno's family becomes so strained by their proximity to the extermination camp, that the father decides to send them away. Feeling guilty that he's already betrayed his friend Shmuel once when he let Shmuel get beeaten for a cupcake Bruno gave him, Bruno decides to dig his way into the extermination camp to help Shmuel find his father. In the camp, the mechanical clockwork of the business of extermination sweeps Bruno along toward the the gas chamber.
Based on a popular novel, the book's transformation into a movie produces a disappointing, depressing, hopeless, one-note story. Although the acting and production quality are good, the story is too slow, too preachy and too clear about the points it tries to make. It leaves no room for imagination. From the beginning, the movie is weighed down by an impending sense of doom.
NOTE from Dr. Ted Baehr, publisher of Movieguide Magazine. For more information from a Christian perspective, order the latest Movieguide Magazine by calling 1-800-899-6684(MOVI) or visit our website at www.movieguide.org. Movieguide is dedicated to redeeming the values of Hollywood by informing parents about today's movies and entertainment and by showing media executives and artists that family-friendly and even Christian-friendly movies do best at the box office year in and year out. Movieguide now offers an online subscription to its magazine version, atwww.movieguide.org. The magazine, which comes out 25 times a year, contains many informative articles and reviews that help parents train their children to be media-wise consumers.
