The following is excerpted from Entertainment Weekly’s review of “The Boy in Striped Pajamas.”
“Gaping at a strange nearby ”farm,” the inquisitive lad befriends a boy on the other side of the barbed wire who is much like Bruno — except, you know, Jewish and slated for extinction. As a Holocaust-for-kids fable, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is an appalling, jaw-dropping movie that will cause serious nightmares. D–” –Entertainment Weekly
This review is puzzling in that the words the reviewer chooses to describe the movie are words that one would surely use to describe its subject. And if a movie causes nightmares, doesn’t that just prove that it’s effective? Is the reviewer implying that it should’ve been toned-down and censored for the 13-year-olds who might see it? Is that right? This isn’t necessarily a movie for kids anyway. The comments below the review are interesting for this one.
Of course, if the marketing team for this is smart, it’s just going to pull out “JAW-DROPPING” and put it on a poster somewhere…
-David and Erica