Taika Waititi’s begrudging director commentary for Jojo Rabbit (2019).

I have been a long time fan of Waititi’s other work, and Jojo Rabbit was the first movie my wife and I saw as a married couple. It is one of my favorite movies and deserved more Oscars than it got.

I received my 4K Blu-ray disk today, and even though we just streamed this movie last week I immediately played it to check the special features. The running theme of the commentary is ‘nobody listens to commentary tracks anymore’, therefore he doesn’t need to put in any effort.

During the scene with the hitler youth camp in the woods, Waititi grouses ‘does anybody care that this was filmed in the Czech Republic? No.’ Yeah, dude! I do! Absorbing trivial factoids about your movie is my entertainment of choice this evening!

There are scenes that are set up by the director saying ‘watch this scene’. Then the scene plays out without commentary and ends. Then the commentary resumes, and the scene is not addressed! Not even an ‘I like that scene’. It feels like Waititi is only providing the minimum speaking time contractually required.

The director calls some of the actors from the movie to chat with him. This is brilliant. Steven Merchant makes our reluctant director talk about his thought process. Thank you, Steven! The conversation with Roman Griffin Davis shines a light on how personable Waititi is. Almost all of the conversations are entertaining.

Then the director calls Rebel Wilson. They had a great chat. Then he found out she was on her way to Fox studios where he was recording. She agrees to meet him there. We hear her and her companion be greeted, then there is no commentary whatsoever for several scenes. What happened there? Or didn’t happen there? What little fits and spurts of commentary we were getting before was gone. When the director comes back, Rebel is gone.

I appreciated the closing thoughts over the credits, but ultimately I found it alienating that the few people who seek out physical media and the extra features therein could be treated so dismissively the rest of the time.

The featurette ‘Into Jojo Rabbit’ is 30 minutes of interviews and alternate takes in a well-produced package. It only appears on the Blu-ray disc. Watch this instead of listening to the commentary.

I am still on the hype train for Thor 4! Might not spring for the 4K disc tho.

Submitted January 25, 2021 at 02:10PM by CTRLALTWARRIOR https://ift.tt/2KJbMQI